Community

Participatory budgeting (PB) is a democratic process in which community members directly decide how to spend part of a public budget. In other words, the people who pay taxes (all of us) decide how tax dollars get spent.

New York City is experiencing a new kind of democracy. Through Participatory Budgeting, residents of four Council Districts are directly deciding how to spend around $6 million of public money. From October 2011 to March 2012, community members are exchanging ideas, working together to turn ideas into project proposals, and voting to decide what proposals get funded.

In April 2012 four City Council Members Announced their Patricipatory Budgeting Awards:

• District 8 - Melissa Mark-Viverito (Manhattan/Bronx)
• District 32 - Eric Ulrich (Queens)
• District 39 - Brad Lander (Brooklyn)
• District 45 - Jumaane Williams (Brooklyn) 

Especially in an economic crisis, the City needs all the talent within the five boroughs to spur economic growth. A new “Senior Service Corps” (SSC) is one way to tap into one of our City's major "natural" resources, the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of experience and intelligence held in the brains of the tens of thousands of retired business leaders who could work with City agencies and companies to assist with workforce and business development. Economic development programs like incubators would benefit from the life-long experience of senior business people who volunteer as chief financial officer, accountant, attorney, or other technical advisor, working with the a start-up firm once every week or two. Companies would gain valuable technical services and SSCs would develop a ground floor relationship with what might be the next Google or Amazon. Active SSCs who have become knowledgeable about City, State and Federal programs could be called upon to serve as economic ambassadors to attract or keep talent or companies in the New York City marketplace.

In 1975 the City of New York departed from a comprehensive centralized City-wide master plan when it recognized the importance of community planning under Section 197-a, and was further expanded in 1989 when New York City’s 59 Community Boards were empowered to develop local land use development plans and retain professional experts. Unfortunately, Community Board offices are under-funded and under-staffed for the hundreds of thousands of people they represent and are often unable to propose a community 197-a plan, with a price tag of $50,000 to $250,000. Of the nine proposed between 1989 and 2004, only seven were adopted by the City Planning Commission and the City Council. But even the seven adopted have largely gone ignored in favor of development in response to special interests and market forces instead of actual City planning. There are countless stories of abandoned community 197-a plans like Greenpoint and Williamsburg begging for affordable housing and preservation of manufacturing jobs only to be given luxury high-rise condominiums.

Community Boards must be empowered to create their own neighborhood 197-a plans by providing funding, technical resources and staffing for these valuable plans so that we can encourage each board to create a 197-a plan for each of our 59 community districts. The Public Advocate should also work with the Borough Presidents to investigate how often the City Council and Department of City Planning (DCP) abide by the few 197-a plans that have been adopted and ensure that DCP begins giving regular reports on those 197-a plans that have been adopted.