By supporting a community-led initiative, the city of Greensboro, N.C., revamped its budgetary process and ignited engagement in the community.

What does a city do when its residents propose an alternative way of engaging them in the local government budget process? The city of Greensboro, North Carolina (pop. 287,027), had to answer that question when Participatory Budgeting Greensboro (PB GSO), a coalition of community members, urged the city to pass a resolution that would allow participatory budgeting.

ICMA Member and Greensboro Budget Director Larry Davis explained that for many residents, the existing budget process was “too complex and intimidating for most people to want to engage in, and residents felt that participatory budgeting would allow them to talk about relative priorities of different projects and participate at a closer-to-the-street level.” 

At the core of participatory budgeting is resident engagement and a democratic process for enabling residents to help determine how public funds are spent. The Greensboro staff was confronted not only with implementing this new strategy but with determining how to engage the community in a very different way.

After a year of discussion, the Greensboro City Council passed a resolution in 2014, and the city became the first in the southeast U.S. to launch a test of participatory budgeting. Most of the city council members believed that if the participatory budgeting process “helped residents feel like their local government was a little less alien and distant,” it was worth the city’s time and effort. 

With $500,000 allocated by the city council and additional support from the community, the Greensboro budget office staff and PB GSO representatives came together to develop an participatory budget process and implementation strategy for the 2017-18 fiscal year.

The city collaborated with Participatory Budget Project staff, who shared engagement best practices from other partner cities, while city staff shared their knowledge of the community. When combined, this information helped shape a new way of looking at community engagement.  

The city recruited volunteers, mostly from local high schools and universities, to attend meetings and educate residents on the process and their role, and to assist at voting events and with project research. City staff also began working with local social organizations, hosting pop-up meetings and “tabling” at community-wide events.

Through this high level of engagement, the initial call for submissions yielded 675 suggestions from residents and over 1,000 participants in the process. Over the last two cycles, the winning projects have included new bus shelters, revamped playgrounds, greenways, and crosswalks.

FY2015-16 PB Cycle Results
Dozens of community volunteers spent hundreds of hours over a six-month period to make the first participatory budgeting process a success. City staff worked closely with community volunteers to review and vet the project submissions. More than 2,000 hours of staff time were devoted to supporting the Greensboro PB process.

The FY 2015-16 PB Cycle 1 ran from September 2015 to May 2016, with 26 winning projects funded in FY 2016-17. PB projects receiving the most votes per district were submitted to city council on June 7, 2016, for inclusion in the FY 2016-17 budget. Project funding became available July 1, 2016, the first day of the fiscal year. More than 1,100 Greensboro residents age 14 and older representing all five council districts and diverse populations within the community voted in Greensboro’s first PB process, which was held in April 2016. The ballots resulted in 46 projects based on ideas submitted by residents. This Phase 1 Evaluation highlights key elements of participation.

FY2017-18 PB Cycle Idea Collection
During the Greensboro PB Cycle 2, residents identified projects to be funded during the 2018-19 fiscal year. The idea collection phase of the Greensboro PB Cycle 2 took place between April and May 2017 and resulted in the submission of 388 ideas, 55 outreach sessions, and engagement with 1,907 residents. Budget delegates vetted proposals and developed 41 ideas to put before voters during the voting period, which ran from March to November 2017.

Nearly 1,200 residents cast ballots, and the process resulted in 25 projects—ranging from installing new playground equipment in Apache Street Park to installing a solar charging station at Peeler Recreation Center—that were submitted to the city manager for inclusion in the FY2018-19 budget, which begins July 1, 2018. Here’s a complete list of the Cycle 2 winning projects.

Learn more about Greensboro’s Participatory Budget Process here.