This story is part of #ATLBudget, a civic engagement project in collaboration with the Center for Civic Innovation and other organizations. Together, we’re breaking down Atlanta’s budget process to show where your tax dollars go—and how you can help shape the city’s priorities. Follow #ATLBudget on Instagram and Bluesky for updates.
Atlanta’s annual budget currently totals $854 million, but there is very little room for direct input from residents. Once the mayor drafts a budget, it’s up to the city council to approve it, incorporating feedback from city departments. Local citizens are limited to providing comments at a couple of scheduled public hearings.
What about using participatory budgeting to give local citizens direct control over how a portion of city funds are used?
Participatory budgeting has caught on with over 7,000 cities worldwide, including New York City and Los Angeles. For New York this year, 24 of the 51 city council members will ask their districts’ residents how to spend roughly $24 million in capital funding to improve schools, libraries, parks, and other public spaces.
Los Angeles is using participatory budgeting for an initiative called LA REPAIR, which asks residents to decide how to distribute about $8.5 million to nine LA neighborhoods that have experienced the greatest inequities from structural racism.
And starting in 2003, Rhode Island asked residents of Pawtucket, Central Falls and Central Providence to decide how to spend almost $1.4 million annually to improve their communities’ health and well-being.
Cities that adopt this approach set aside anywhere from 1% to 15% of their discretionary budget for direct citizen input, then ask residents to propose ideas — like a new bike lane or a playground — and vote on how to spend the funds. Could participatory budgeting give Atlantans more of a say in how their tax dollars are used?
Atlanta potential
The potential for participatory budgeting in Atlanta is vast, particularly in specific budget areas like transportation, where perennial traffic congestion means just about all Atlanta residents are affected and likely to engage.
In fact, City Councilmember Amir Farokhi introduced Downtown Decides! in 2019, to give his district’s residents input into $1 million worth of transportation improvements. (District 2 stretches from Midtown southeast to Inman Park.) The positive response prompted him to expand it in 2021 to include park projects.
“Participatory budgeting is one of the easiest ways to increase civic engagement and build trust in government,” Farokhi said. “Asking people how public dollars should be spent often yields not only increased excitement and engagement among residents, [as well as] solutions to problems that maybe the city didn’t realize existed.”
But Farokhi said that when he proposed expanding the pilot program to other city council districts in 2021, he faced pushback from his fellow council members. When he suggested setting aside $500,000 to $1 million for a participatory budgeting project across two or three districts, colleagues argued that the funds should be distributed among all 12 districts.
The outcome of the pilot wasn’t so participatory for the council districts, Farokhi said. “Folks either did some diluted version of participatory budgeting, like, ‘Hey, here’s three options. What do you want to do?’ – versus asking people what the option should be – or they just use the money for their own purposes.”
How Atlanta distributes its general fund
What’s the benefit?
The main benefit of participatory budgeting is that it allows local governments to make more informed and responsive budgeting decisions, according to Rahel Teka, a spokesperson for the Participatory Budgeting Project.
“The more perspectives you bring to the decision-making table, the more you can get to the root causes of issues – and the more likely you can propose programs and infrastructure that meet the community’s needs,” Teka said. The process itself, she added, gives residents a way to promote their desired projects with public officials, even if they don’t make the cut.
By giving residents a direct role in decision-making, participatory budgeting can build trust between communities and local governments, Teka said. Community members work with local officials to determine how the designated percentage of their city or county’s budget gets spent. Ideally, that produces projects that are aligned with local needs.
”People learn more about how government works, collaborate with government officials, and … obtain a new avenue to finally concretely influence their environments that impact their everyday lives,” she said.
How does it work?
In Atlanta, the city council and the mayor are responsible for the city budget, so they would determine the amount to allocate for the participatory process. The Participatory Budgeting Project suggests allocating $1 million for every 100,000 people in population, which would amount to about $5 million for Atlanta.
The overall process is pretty straighforward. Initially, the city council can form a community steering committee to design the rules and logistics. Then, residents participate in community events and online platforms to suggest how to spend the designated funds. After collecting ideas, volunteers work with city staff to turn them into actionable proposals. Finally, community members vote on the proposals they want to see funded, and the winning projects receive funding.
Where could Atlanta use it?
Farokhi suggested that participatory budgeting works best by starting with a defined budget for a specific project category, like transportation. (In Porto Allegre, Brazil, where participatory budgeting started in 1989, the residents propose what the city’s actual spending priorities should be – not just how to spend a pre-determined amount of public funds.)
Even when residents come to consensus on how they want to spend their designated dollars, it’s not without obstacles, Farokhi said. “As much as you can vet the projects for viability, there’s oftentimes either institutional or community resistance to the results,” he said.
For example, the winning District 2 transit project for downtown Atlanta was to add a bike lane on Marietta Street, he said. “But there was pushback from the city and neighboring properties, and we had to redirect those dollars to other pedestrian improvements.”
Higher-income areas also tend to have lower participation, Farokhi said. “The wealthier the neighborhood, the lower the participation,” he explained. “Those folks just pay to get things done the way they want. You see increasing participation as you go down the income ladder.”
In fact, one outcome of participatory budgeting can be to increase voter participation in lower income areas. A study of New York City’s project found that citizens who engaged in participatory budgeting were 8.4% more likely to turn out to vote.