City Council - Ways & Means Committee Hearing on Dockets #0733-0740, FY27 Budget: Participatory Budgeting

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

and many more.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Ben Weber. I am the Boston City Councilor for District 6 and the Chair of the Boston City Council Committee on Ways and Means. Today is April 23, 2026, and the exact time is 2.11 in the afternoon. This hearing is being recorded, is also being live streamed at boston.gov slash city dash council dash tv. and broadcast on Xfinity Channel 8, RCN Channel 82 and Fios Channel 964. The Council's budget review process will encompass a series of public hearings that began last week and will run through June. We strongly encourage residents to take a moment to engage in this process by giving testimony for the record. You can do so in several ways. First, you can attend one of our hearings and give public testimony. We will take public testimony at the end of the first round of questions from my council colleagues.

We're also going to take public testimony to listening sessions, which will be At night at City Hall, the first being on Tuesday, April 28th at 6 p.m., and the second being on Thursday, May 26th at 6 p.m. Those are listening sessions. You can see the full hearing schedule on our website at boston.gov slash council dash budget. In lieu of appearing in person, you can also testify by Zoom, which you can... Let's see, if you want to testify virtually, you can email the Council Budget Review website. You can fill out an online form at the Council Budget Review website, or you can email the committee at ccc.wm at boston.gov, or by emailing Karishma Chauhan, that's K-A-R,

ISHMACHOUHAN at boston.gov. If you're here to testify in person at a hearing, which anyone is welcome to do, you should sign up. There's a sheet at the entrance if you want your name called for public testimony. If you signed up and your name is called, you have two minutes to testify. Please just identify yourself and tell us what your affiliation is, if you're representing an organization. or just where you live in the city and you'll have two minutes to make your voice heard. If you don't have time to come here or testify virtually, you can also email written testimony to the committee at ccc.wm.boston.gov. Lastly, you can also submit a two-minute video of your testimony through the form on our website.

For more information on the Boston City Council budget process and how to testify, please visit the City Council's budget website at boston.gov slash city, sorry, boston.gov slash council dash budget. The in-person testimony will be taken following the first round of questions from my colleagues, and folks will have two minutes to testify. Again, if you want to testify virtually at this hearing, you can email our Director of Legislative Budget Analysis Karishma Chauhan at karishma.chauhan.com for the Zoom link and your name will be added to the list. This afternoon's hearing is on docket numbers 0733 to 0740, an overview of the FY27 budget for the Office of Participatory Budgeting. This is one in a series of hearings that we'll be having on the FY27 budget.

These matters were sponsored by Mayor Michelle Wu and referred to the committee on April 8th, 2026. Today, I'm joined by my colleagues in order of arrival, Councilor Flynn, Councilor Culpepper, and Councilor Coletta Zapata. Let's see. So at these budget hearings, we do waive opening statements. We're just going to go to the panel. This will be, you know, Easier than some panels, because there's only one panelist to introduce. Today's panelist is Renato Costello, who's the director of the Office of Participatory Budgeting. So just give me a second. There's no one online? Okay. And nobody here wants to testify in person? Just... Checking, you can decide later. OK, so Renato, the floor is yours, and then we'll go to questions from my colleagues.

Thank you, Chair Weber. I will do a brief presentation and then I'm happy to answer any questions about the office or the process that we're running. Let's see if this works. So the Office of Participatory Budgeting consists of three full-time staff, me as the director, Blanca Teixeira, senior finance and operations manager, and a community partnerships and project coordinator that were currently accepting candidates for review. Participatory budgeting is a democratic process where community members decide how to spend a part of a public budget. PB advances the city's goals around civic engagement and community collaboration by addressing barriers for public participation

and decision-making local government elevating resident informed project ideas that reflect their priorities and lived experiences and bringing communities and city government together. The mission of the Office of Participatory Budgeting is to provide an official point of entry for Boston residents to contribute to the city's budget process. Through partnerships with community organizations, collaboration with city departments, and guidance from our external oversight board, the office hosts yearly participatory budgeting cycles to allow for continuous engagement. We offer opportunities for the public to propose community-centered project ideas to address local priorities, engage resident priorities to inform the city's budget process. The ideas that residents propose have to meet certain criteria. Projects are limited to a one-time expense and cannot create new permanent positions.

Project ideas must be feasible to implement, be consistent with existing city policies, laws, regulations, and the participatory budgeting ordinance. Projects must be implemented or managed by the appropriate city department or agency receiving direct budget appropriations. Project ideas may include programs and services, as well as funding for physical improvements, such as community enhancements on city-owned public property, like benches, trash containers, green infrastructure, et cetera. Physical improvements on projects Projects on private, state, or federal property are not eligible, such as projects concerning the Department of Conservation and Recreation or the MBTA. So this is our timeline and phases that we have as part of the process. We start in July with idea collection.

and it is an opportunity for residents to share their project ideas with our office and we have multiple ways for residents to submit their ideas. We have a multilingual online platform, we have a multilingual phone line, We have booths at public libraries and some BCYF community centers and here at City Hall. And we also work with community organizations to host events across the city to collect ideas from residents. After we collect those ideas, that happens during the entire month of July. We take August and September to review those ideas and make sure that they fit with the criteria that I shared earlier. And we work with the data analytics team to help us categorize those ideas and put them into Packets, so we can bring those back to residents for proposal development. So what happens in October through between October and December, we host what we call proposal development forums.

and there are two types of meetings that we do during this phase. In October, we go to different neighborhoods across the city and engage residents so they can review the ideas and they can prioritize the ideas that they want to see on the ballot. So at the end of the October forums, we walk away with 12 to 15 prioritized ideas by residents. And then in November, we host additional forums where residents and city departments come together Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The legal team, procurement, Office of Budget Management, and the Finance Cabinet to make sure that whatever ideas move forward to the ballot are actually feasible to implement.

During this time, departments also determine the amount of funding that each of the ideas will have attached to them. And this is done based on the capacity of the department and also the impact that the idea will have on residents. So once the ideas are finalized, then we go on to the voting phase, which typically happens between January 15th and February 15th. We have a whole month for residents to vote. Thank you. Thank you. all multilingual as well. So there's accessibility on that end. Residents can vote for up to five of their favorite proposals on the ballot, and those with the most votes get awarded up to the funding amount that we have for that particular year. For instance, from our previous process,

We're able to fund eight ideas out of 13 on the ballot, totaling $2.2 million. Once those ideas are selected, we connect with departments again to start thinking about implementation plans and also a timeline. for them to start implementing the idea and also determining what's the best way for implementing this particular idea. Our FY27 recommended operating budget is $1,891,561. And this is a decrease of $242,690 compared to FY26. And this is due to the reclassification of the chief of staff role to a coordinator position. and also a reduction to the Special Appropriations line. 62% of our operating budget supports PV projects through the Special Appropriations line.

As authorized by the PV ordinance, prior year balances in our operating budget have been rolled into a separate continuous fund to support multi-year projects. Using accumulated balances in the fund, we can award $2 million worth of projects for the upcoming participatory budgeting cycle. So I'll share with you all a brief overview of our latest participatory budgeting process that ended this past February. The main faces that I want to highlight is idea collection. We collected over 1,200 ideas from residents across the city. The highlight here is that we co-sponsored 31 events across the city where residents can come together and submit their ideas. We also had, as I mentioned earlier, accessibility for submitting ideas at BCYFs, Public Library, and City Hall, and also online and through the phone.

For proposal development, we hosted five in-person forums in East Boston, Mattapan, Brighton, and two here at City Hall with a combined number of 200 participants in all those forums. And out of those forums, we have 13 project proposals drafted by Boston residents seated on the same table with city departments crafting an idea for the ballot. And then for voting, residents have the chance to vote on those 13 ballot proposals. We received over 4,800 votes collected both online and in person with the highest voter turnout in Jamaica Plain, Dorchester, Brighton, Austin, East Boston, and Roslindale. These are some photos of the five events we hosted. In all of the events, we provided childcare, interpretation and translation, and refreshments for people. These were often two, two and a half hour meetings.

We created these meetings in small group tables so there is room for conversation and collaboration among residents and city departments. One of the highlights of our process is our model for resident engagement, where we use our contracted services line to contract with community organizations to connect with residents who would otherwise wouldn't know about this process or wouldn't engage in the process. This past cycle we contracted with 19 nonprofits throughout the timeline of our process and our goal is to leverage their expertise they know best about their communities and also their trust so more residents can participate and engage in ideas in action.

This past cycle, we had eight winning ideas that received a cumulative $2.2 million in funding. So in order of most voted, we had immigrant legal defense fund. We had over 3,700 people voting for this idea. And the mayor's office for immigrant advancement will receive $400,000 to implement this. The Neighborhood Fresh Food Access Initiative. We had over 3,000 votes and $500,000 will go to the Office of Food Justice to implement this idea. Bridging the Gap, Assistance for Housing Stability. We had 2,800 votes and the Office of Supportive Housing Services will receive $200,000 to implement the idea. Immigrant Career Pathways, Bridge in Language and Employment.

We had almost 2,100 votes, and the Office of Workforce Development will be receiving $300,000 to implement this idea. Green My Block. received over 1,900 votes, and the Office of Green Infrastructure will be implementing this idea. Workforce training programs focus on trades. Also, the Office of Workforce Development will be managing this program for $300,000. Youth Financial Literacy and Empowerment workshops received over 1,500 votes, and the Center for Working Families will receive $250,000 to implement this idea. and Small Business Development Resource Program received a little bit over 1,200 votes and the Office of Small Business will receive $150,000 to implement it. I also want to share updates on the implementation of the ideas that were awarded during the first cycle of participatory budgeting.

Out of those six ideas, two are completed already. So one of those is expand access to fresh foods and The PB funds were successfully leveraged as part of a $3 million coordinated response to the November 2025 SNAP funding delay, which was in line with the language of the proposal when it was voted for. Youth Rental Assistance, the Office of Housing Stability created a Youth Tenant Stabilization Fund that supported 54 households with an average housing support of $3,695 to support housing costs. In progress, we have supports for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated youth. Grants were awarded to 12 nonprofits in May of 2025, and the programs are currently in implementation and should be completed fairly soon. Bus benches, bus stop benches.

So the procurement was finalized for 120 benches and the installation of those benches is scheduled for the fall of this year following some of the winter delays we experienced. RAD Prevention Initiatives, with the Inspectional Services, Boston Housing Authority, and Public Works secured upgraded trash containers for four Boston Housing Authority sites in Brighton. and a test unit will be installed later this summer with a full rollout in the fall of 2026. And Community Gardens Grow Boston is currently reviewing grant applications and projects are slated to break ground later this summer. So we have movement in all of the proposals with some of them already being completed. So what happens to the ideas that don't make it through?

We have a multi-year dashboard where anyone in the city can go and review all the ideas that were submitted, where they came from, and also what were the major themes that came up per year. So residents and anyone in the city can visit boston.gov slash participate. This site is under the idea collection tab. and you'll be able to explore all the ideas we've collected during the past two years. And here are some data about participation. We've embedded evaluation since the beginning of our process because we want to learn more about how to improve it and some of the impacts that We learned that ideas in action engage Boston's diverse communities, reaching every neighborhood, a range of demographic groups, and residents who are not otherwise civically engaged.

The earlier phases, which is idea collection and proposal development, where residents submit ideas and shape their proposals, most effectively engage residents who have been historically excluded or underrepresented. Earlier phases engage more youth and older adults at or beyond their share of the Boston population. So youth ages 11 to 19 participated double the rate of their population during these earlier phases, which means we received many ideas from them and they also helped shape those proposals, which is about 22% of the participation of youth. and similar numbers for folks ages 60 and above. We have over 20% of participants that we engage in those earlier phases, sharing ideas and helping shape those proposals. We see that for voting, over 75% of residents were between the ages of 20 and 49.

About 8% of voters identified as youth 11 to 19 and the same percentage of residents 60 and above. In terms of household income, earlier phases engaged more lower and middle income residents relative to the Boston population. Over 60% of residents who participated in idea collection and proposal development had household incomes of less than $75,000, and for voting, about 38% of residents fit under that bracket of income. In terms of race, in earlier phases also we engaged more Asian, Latinx, and Black residents well beyond their share of the population. And in terms of neighborhood, all neighborhoods participated. and this was through contributions through our community partners.

We had engagement from Austin, Brighton, Chinatown, Dorchester, East Boston, Mattapan and Roxbury just to highlight some of the neighborhoods where we had more engagement. And to close the presentation, a little bit about the impact of participatory budgeting. This is a fairly new initiative. We just finished the second year of the process. And similar to the first year, Participants felt that ideas in action allowed their voices to be heard by the City of Boston, which is an early indication for trust in city government. And residents and city staff worked together productively to develop the proposals and almost all forum participants, which were about 91% of Those who responded to the survey said that it helped them understand how the budget process works. We are finalizing a full report of this latest cycle, which will be available in June of 2026. And I'll close sharing a quote

From one of the forum participants, and I'll read it in Spanish and English, in Spanish says, I think this is a setting where you're free and your voice is given power and importance and you have the opportunity to make a difference. And I welcome any questions. Thank you for the attention.

Thank you very much. We've also been joined by Councillor Brayden. We're going to lead off with Councillor Flynn. Six minutes, so time for a second round if you need it.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for being here, sir. Can you tell me last year's fiscal year, what was the budget for participatory budget?

For FY25? Yeah. Let me get you that number. The total number was $2,130,217.

Can you repeat that?

$2,130,217.

And what is it for this FY26 recommendation?

For FY26, the current fiscal year is $2,134,250.

Okay, and the recommendation for FY27?

$1,891,561.

What percentage decrease is that?

About 11.4%. 11%?

Yeah. Okay. And you mentioned you have three people on your staff?

Correct.

Okay. That's a pretty significant decrease, isn't it? 11% for your staff, I mean for your department.

Part of the decrease came through a reclassification of one of the roles in the department. We had a chief of staff and Cynthia transitioned at the beginning of this year and we saw this as an opportunity to transform that role into more of a community partnerships and project coordinator role. So that was part of the decrease in the salaries for that role. And the other part came from a reduction in the special appropriations.

Okay. Oh, so part of it was the reclassification of it? A personnel position? Correct. Okay. So what would the salary, the chief of staff salary, so when you reclassified it, the salary was at a certain point, and then once it was reclassified, It was decreased to a certain point. Is that accurate? Correct. Okay. What was the chief of staff salary?

I don't know, top of my mind. I know that there was a reduction on that. I can get you that number.

Okay. And what is the current salary of the new position, of the reclassified position?

I think the range will go from 70 to 78 or something like that, depending on experience.

Okay. Can I ask was there any outreach to any of the veterans community or military families as part of participatory budget?

I am not sure if they were not one of the organizations that applied. We had an open application. For groups to receive funding to support with outreach but we welcome any applications or any referrals.

But when you were educating the public or doing town hall types, Did you make any specific outreach to the veterans community?

Not with this particular population. We did communications and media investment, so general public are aware of the process. We were able to work with the 19 organizations focused mostly on neighborhoods and different types of ages. But I don't know nothing particularly to that community, which is something that we can definitely do for the next cycle.

Was there any outreach specifically in South End or Chinatown? Yes. Where in the south end?

Well, in Chinatown. OK. Yeah. The south end, we didn't have any organization apply from that neighborhood.

OK. We're in Chinatown then?

We work with the Chinese Golden Age Center to engage older adults in the Asian community.

What programs do you work with with the Golden Age Center?

So the way we run our contract with community partners is depending on the phase in which we're in. So for idea collection, they host workshops or events where they engage the residents in collecting ideas. So they hosted, I believe, two workshops last year. and for proposal development we invite people to come to the events here at City Hall and for voting they help us to outreach to for residents to vote oh but they weren't

They weren't funded with anything. They were funded. Oh, they were. How much did they receive?

Top of mind, I think our limits for last year were about $3,500, $4,000. Okay.

What is the, and I just want to be very respectful when I'm asking. I don't necessarily agree with the participatory budget program, Although I think you're doing a good job, I want to be respectful to you. I just think during challenging times, we have to look at all city departments and make difficult decisions. But having said that, is there any place else in your budget you think could be cut?

Don't think so. We're running with a pretty tight budget. Thankfully, the reductions that we're making won't impact Thank you. Thank you. I don't see other ways that we can cut it.

Okay. Mr. Chair, my time is up. May I ask one more question? Yes. Okay. So could I just go back to the one question I asked is, about the reduction that you're potentially going to receive. Part of it is because of the reclassification of a job position, but But if that wasn't the case, how much would the budget have decreased without that particular job reclassification?

The reduction in the special... Special appropriation line is $200,000.

Oh, so your budget would have decreased $100,000? $200,000. Oh, $200,000. And what percent would that have been?

Top of mind, I'm not sure, but combined, so we have the $200,000. Our total decrease for this year is $243,000, so yeah. Okay.

Thank you for answering my questions. Mr. Chair, thank you. Thank you, Councilor.

Thank you very much. Councilor Culpepper, do you want to use your time today? Okay, you've got six minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for holding this hearing. And unlike my colleague next to me, I believe that the participatory budgeting process should and in some cases must be increased. And I say that because when you think about the involvement of community in the budgeting process, this is the only real Thank you. Thank you. 2 million to 10 million.

And I say that because as we look at where the proposals are coming from, as we look at how the decisions are made, I really think there should be one per Council District, and then maybe one for each of the at-large counselors. Because when you look at it, not every area of the city, not every district, is going to have one of the proposals coming out of that district. And so when I look at what I'd like to see, unlike my colleague here, and we agree on most things, this is just something that we don't agree on. I'd love to see the budget increase, but let me ask you a couple of questions about the 13 proposals. In the information that you provided,

There were 19 nonprofits that were chosen. How much were those? What was the average of the contract amounts for the 19 nonprofits that were chosen to be part of the outreach for this

I think on average we spend maybe $2,500 to $3,000 per group.

And did you have, out of the 19, was each council district represented in By the nonprofits.

I have that information in one of the slides where we share the areas we covered with the nonprofits. I'm not sure if we cover every neighborhood of the city, but we had 31 events happening.

What about District 7? Did you cover my district? Yes, we did.

We work with... Let me get an answer on that so I don't give you an incorrect answer. Okay.

And how did you determine in the... Participation Breakdown, you have the household income. How did you determine the household income of those that were involved?

We do surveys. Yes, so for idea collection, for people who submit ideas online, there is an optional survey at the end. We actually embedded key questions as part of the survey. Thank you very much. Same thing with proposal development. We had surveys at the forums and surveys for voting in that embedding those questions into the actual form

And so when you look at the earlier phases engage more lower and middle income residents, When you say earlier phases, do you mean when they submitted their proposals? Yep. And how did you determine that?

through the analysis of the responses. So we saw that people who completed surveys during idea collection and proposal development tend to be more of that demographic. And that's due mostly some of the purposeful outreach that we're doing with the community partners. during voting anyone in the city can participate anyone can vote and this is mostly online voting so that's where we see More people from other income brackets or other demographics also participated in voting for the ideas.

So you had 1,200 ideas submitted and nearly 5,000 votes cast. Correct. And you looked at where those came from? Right. And where did most of those votes come from?

So let me share, I have my slides. So for voting, for voting, we had about 20. So in terms of income or race or what metric or age?

Where? So whether they came from Jamaica Plain, whether they came from the South End, whether they came from Roxbury, I just wanted to look at where the breakdown of those votes came from.

Yeah, that may be something I can get you afterwards. I have some data, but may not have that with me, but definitely have that as part of the analysis.

And so for the proposals for The ones that were selected. Can you give me, when you get a chance, where and what part of the city, if you can, by district, by council district, where they came from?

The ideas, where the ideas originated.

And the final, yeah, and the final selection.

I'll take this chance. This is something we can find for you. So we're tasked to run a citywide process and residents submit ideas from all parts of the city. And the way we go about implementing those ideas, in many cases, most of the proposals are programs or services which become then grants to nonprofits across the city to do their work locally. That's the 19. The 19. The 19 non-profits. No, no, no. The non-profits only help...

So you're talking about other grants?

Exactly. So... I can explain. Yeah, so the 19 nonprofits that we work with this past cycle support our office mostly with outreach and engagement. to collect ideas, bring people to the events, and support voting outreach. At that point, after voting is done, our contract with the nonprofits is over for that year. So once an idea is selected, We go to the department, and with the department, they define what's the best way to implement this idea. For instance, one of the ideas from the first cycle was...

Okay, you go through where...

Departments, the city departments that are responsible for that. Subject. For instance, we had an idea about supporting incarcerated and formerly incarcerated residents, youth. So we work with the Office of Returning Citizens. to determine what would be the best way to spend this money and support that population. And they opted to do grants to nonprofits working with that population. So when they opened that grant application, nonprofits from across the city can apply and receive funding to do the work at the local level.

So those grants came out of the original $2 million? From the first year, yes. Okay. Mr. Chairman, I've got one more question, if I may. Okay. So if you were to arrange or set up the participatory budgeting so that every council district and each at-large member could identify one, how much more would that cost? I mean, because I think it would be a great idea if each council district, Flynn, his district had one project selected or mine where each where within those districts they competed and then the four at large had

The ability to identify one citywide, how much more would that cost to do it that way?

I think some of the things I'll consider is the staff capacity to run Those processes, the one we're running now is very involved and we heavily rely on community organizations to support us and some external contractors to help us with some of the events. So I will think about how much more staff the office will need to run nine or 10. It will be many, you know, it's not many because it's a lot of population.

Per district, you would have to run the same, Operation Per District, in order to come up with one?

It took us a little bit of time to come up with this model that we have right now, so I will really have to think about, I don't have a solution off the top of my head for it.

I just think it's a fair way because some districts don't get one and so if you look year after year after year that district may not get one I'm just looking at it from a fair perspective to give each district an opportunity to have at least one project where you have other districts you have more than one. So think about that model where each district had at least one, and the four at-large Councillors could identify one citywide. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much, Councillor Culpepper, Councillor Coletta Zapata.

Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon, Renato. It's good to see you always. Happy to see your ascension into this leadership role. Just really want to give you kudos and your flowers for the work that you've done. Folks in my district have said that The process was exactly how they envisioned it. And a lot of that has to do with your visionary leadership and your work and the work of your team. So thank you for that. I'm really proud to have played a support role in 2020 2021 to draft the Charter Amendment outlining the creation of this office. inquiry to the AG's office about the constitutionality of that, and then following up with the Better Boston campaign in 2021. That got this on the ballot and the people of Boston resoundingly said yes. And so just to see this presentation and the fruits of

Our collective labor was just amazing and it's great to see that city government actually can work on behalf of the people and in such a tangible way so I think that that's great. There's been a lot of misinformation about I think specifically that the and many more. Thank you. The percentage of teens that have been a part of the process and then the percentage of votes that they had within the process.

Thank you for that question. So from the data I presented, we saw that during the earlier phases, which is idea collection and proposal development, we had about 22% of those who participated were between the ages of 11 and 19, which is great. It's young people getting involved, proposing ideas on what they would like to see in their communities. and also helping shape what those ideas become on the ballot, working alongside city departments on the same table. In terms of voting, we had About 8% of voters in that age range participated.

Okay, so 8% of the final votes came from that group of... 11 to 19, correct. Okay, okay. I mean, for me, I think that the number is low. I do love the fact that youth are actively involved in getting a crash course into how city government works. and understanding that while they may not be able to vote, they do have power over the future of their city and helping to define it. If I'm a young kid and I'm getting involved, I would hate to be dissuaded to not get involved by some of the comments that are being said. So thank you for that. I hope that we get that number up. Can you just talk about the amount of money, I'm sorry if I missed it, that's in the participatory special revenue fund?

Yes.

So in the special revenue fund, at the end of this fiscal year, we'll have about $2.2 million.

For this year, we have $2.2 million?

in the Special Revenue Fund. Yes.

Okay.

At the end of this fiscal year, that's what we will have.

Okay. And then how... How okay and then like the flow of money coming in and out with the projects that are being funded at what point are you then is the Treasury Transpiring these funds over to say for example Office of Food Justice for FY 27 or housing like how does that how does that timeline work? Does it depend on the readiness and eligibility of the department to receive these funds?

Yeah so This happens or is planned to happen within the next month or so. So it will happen within this fiscal year. So each department will receive a line item, a budget line item that they can from our special revenue fund that they can pull funding when they are ready to do the implementation of the projects. So those 2.2 that I mentioned, Right, is what carries for the next year, but departments can technically access the funding as early as, you know, in the next couple of weeks to start implementing the ideas.

Okay, that's great. And we had food justice in here yesterday. And so I was asking, just given the urgency of some of the numbers that we're seeing and the gaps for feeding some of our most hungry and the loss of federal funds through SNAP and all of that, How quickly they can get this operationalized within their office. Walk me through what your conversations are to manifest this in the departments and make sure that the intent and spirit of what So we kind of help shepherd the process.

At the end of the day, We are there to support and provide as much scaffolding as possible. We had meetings with each of the departments last month to have a kickoff meeting basically to establish A timeline, what are some of the milestones that they want to do, and also ask about coordinating the transferring of the funds to the departments. So we host meetings with them every month or every other month just to check in on progress. In some cases, the implementation is very straightforward, like this will become A grant for X and then it's just creating a grant agreement or a grant proposal for nonprofits to apply.

In other cases, it takes a little bit more research working with the legal team or procurement to figure out how to bring that idea to reality. We've seen that in the first year's projects, two of those, which were grants, were already completed. There were some others that needed a little bit more technical provision like the community gardens for instance which they are just now reviewing applications to award those grants. Each project moves at a different pace based on how complex it may be to implement.

Okay, thank you. Thank you so much for your work. I appreciate it. Thank you, Chair.

Okay, thank you. Madam President.

Thank you and good to see you. Likewise. I'm really another big supporter of participatory budgeting. I think it's a wonderful, it's the process, it's really in that whole engagement that's got a lot of added value. It's not just about the, The dollar amount, it's the level of engagement that is transforming community conversations about Budget Priorities. And I know from talking to some of the participants in the Alston Brighton groups, they got to appreciate, from listening to other participants, they got to appreciate other people's opinions. Other people's priorities, get an understanding of the challenges that folks that they may not have met on a regular basis, may not have met ever before in their lives, but to hear what their challenges were and what was important to them.

So I think it's testament to the way it's been structured and all the great non-profit groups that are partnering with you to increase the outreach and engage with more and more people. I'm really pleased with how it's going. I share Councillor Culpepper's sentiment. It would be nice to have more money in the bucket to use in this process, but I think this is, I think it's reaching its, Purpose of just democratizing how we think about budgets and community participation. So it's really wonderful. I was wondering just... What criteria does the office use to determine whether a resident proposed project is eligible, feasible or cost appropriate? Like there's certain checks and balances that you have to think about going through the process.

That's a great question. Thank you. I think it goes through different phases. So at the beginning, we collect all the ideas we can. And what we do internally in those months of August and September is broadly reviewed that they fit the general criteria for project eligibility of the projects. So for instance, From the last year's cycle, we received 1,200 ideas, but about close to 1,000 were actually eligible because others were, let's say, not in city property or You know, too big to implement so that's the first review. Most of the ideas make it through but there were some that are beyond the scope of what the PV process can do. Then We see ourselves more as a facilitator of the process because all the ideas, row as they come, we bring back to people in bite size that they can review them and prioritize them.

So residents themselves get a chance to make that assessment of what's more urgent, what makes sense for the communities in which they live. So from the October forums, We charge with residents the responsibility of reviewing and voting for their top ideas. So at the end of October, we have 12 to 15 ideas that make it through. Then those ideas come to City Hall where we bring residents and city departments and we create a space where residents share why this is important for them and city departments provide some of the technical context. What is the city already doing? What are some gaps? How can we best transform this idea? and make it feasible. So that's one of the checks as well. We have city departments having that initial conversation with residents on feasibility. And after those meetings, once we have the draft proposal, because they actually draft

Thank you very much. From the proposal drafting stage to what you see on the ballot, there is like minimal event changes because those meetings are very important that people can understand some of the trade-offs of what they are proposing.

And, you know, when you're sort of developing the review the idea categories, do you bring People from different neighborhoods together to review the different categories. I think that was part of the, that happens, doesn't it?

Yes.

And I think that was where I was getting the feedback that that was really incredibly valuable for people because It was important for folks who lived in Alston, Brighton to hear what folks in Mattapan were up against, what people in Chinatown were experiencing. And I think, too, this is where I would differ with my colleague, Councillor Culpepper, I think It gets people to think outside the box in terms of what their needs are in their own particular neighbourhood are, but to think citywide about the challenges that other residents of Boston are facing. I think that's really valuable. And then I was wondering, how can residents track the project progress?

We have a section of our website that is called Project Implementation. and by cycle they can click on each of the ideas and we update that every month or so with updates we receive from city departments. So the information we have there is the most up-to-date information on each of the projects that receive funding.

And then how do we measure success? What's your definition of success?

How do you measure it? Yeah, many ways of measuring. I think one is... amount of participation, amount of ideas collected, amount of people that come to the events to work with us to prioritize the ideas. The rate in which projects are being implemented, that's actually one of our priorities and something that we're looking at now more seriously because now after two years, we have about 14 project ideas that have been selected and $4.2 million that we need to implement, we need to spend. So two of those ideas, as I mentioned, have been completed, but another milestone of success is the rate of completion, making sure that Projects get completed as soon as possible.

Acknowledge that some city departments who received funding, they have limited resources, limited staff capacity, and they are very graceful and willing to work with us to implement these ideas. So in some cases, the project may may delay a little more just because of the staff capacity in each of the departments, but all of the departments are excited about working with residents and getting to implement the ideas.

Thank you. Thank you for your work. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. A couple questions from the Chair. So in terms of the number of votes, I think there's about 5,000 last cycle. What was the number before that? Are we trending in the right direction? What's the goal for FY27?

We received a little bit over 4,800 votes. It's about a 500-vote increment from the first cycle. So we had more votes on the first year, but we want to continue to grow that number over time. One of the... Yeah, so we do a series of strategies to try to bring those communities to vote, working with community organizations, also using some social media, the city's accounts to promote voting. So overall there has been an increase, but we want to continue to grow that.

Yeah, I guess... In terms of like our amendments last year, and I think we moved 200,000 from contractual services to the actual participatory budgeting fund. My memory is we looked at it saying, well, in terms of outreach, they could do the outreach in-house rather than spend that money on outside firms to do outreach. So maybe we didn't help you in that way. But then how did it actually work? I think there are two contracts, and I think there might have been some unintended consequences. Can you just explain what happened after we voted on the amendment?

First of all, I really appreciated the effort to increase project funding. We did face challenges in trying to meet some of the vision we had for outreach and engagement with the contract. So the way we do that is funding that goes to community groups to help us We had to reduce some of that funding and therefore their Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. because of the limited amount of funding we had to execute to run the process. So we ended up

Honoring the 2.2 million for projects, but we had to do an internal transfer of $100,000 back to the contracting line because we couldn't run the process basically with what was proposed. for FY26.

Okay, and then if you can fill this position, it's community engagement or something, like how will that impact how you Will you be able to do more outreach in the next cycle once you fill that position?

The key role for this, the key objective for this position is to We want to expand and strengthen the partnerships with community groups. This is our second year. Partnership with some of these groups and also expand and bring new groups that target other demographics that we may not be reaching. So that's one of the things for this person. Also, we need some of the supporting, keeping track and following up on the project implementation side. So that's another component that this person will help us do. In terms of outreach, I think most of the help that we'll receive from this person will be on event logistics for the forums in the fall. We now rely on an external contractor to help us with facilitation, and help us with some of the venue logistics.

So having someone that can help us look into that can help increase.

And what's the time? Do you have a timeline?

We, thankfully the application went out, was live, I think, two days ago. Okay. And hopefully by late summer, early fall, we can have someone on board.

Okay.

But, would you mind if I just make a point? I think that the... The outreach that we do, the model that we have is that We act as like a central office for other groups in the different areas of the city to do outreach on behalf of the city. and many more.

So, okay, the ordinance, I'm just going to read here. It's from a constituent. The ordinance says that, you know, the Office of Participatory Budgeting Working in Partnership will establish and manage a participatory budgeting process for residents to both engage with the city's annual budget process and to make recommendations for projects to include in the budget. So, I mean, I feel like there's a two-part process. This was to create like sort of like a feedback loop where we're not just voting on things every year. We're actually sort of creating advocacy for what we want to see in future budgets. Is that happening or do we have to? Do more. Am I understanding that part right about purchase through budgeting? And are you having discussions with the Office of Budget Management, the mayor's office about what

What you've gained from this, or they're taking these suggestions. To me, it seems like we're not That's correct.

The intention is for residents to decide what ideas can be funded with PV money. and also help inform budget priorities for the larger budget. We don't have a way to enforce that obviously. We can provide information and departments can look at and the website we've created to identify what are some of the key priorities that people have.

Is that happening?

I don't know. Maybe some departments are looking at it and considering their proposals, but This may be something of an area potentially for growth as we continue to have the process.

I mean, I want to hear from them that, oh, we've We've talked to Renato. At least we have some guidance there about what you've picked up in all of your community outreach and what people want to see. Culpepper. Okay. And just one last thing for me, and I think Councilor Culpepper, while you stepped out, Councilor Breadon was talking about you know her support for the for participatory budgeting which I think I join with both of you on that in terms of the sort of neighborhood specific things it's which I think if I understand your Suggestion, which sounds good. In terms of the projects that get awarded, I feel like when you look at basically immigrant legal defense, fresh food access, youth, Rent Stabilization.

Those are city-wide projects, I think, that we come to and require sort of Cross, you know, district discussions. But I don't know what, you know, in terms of like, and maybe I just, in terms of I'll let Councillor Culpepper address this, but in terms of your office, when you're looking at projects and things are citywide versus neighborhood specific, how does that factor in to your analysis of a project?

Yeah, so the projects, I think, are set up in a way in which Multiple parts of the city can benefit from, be it through grants to different nonprofits, or one example is the bus benches from the first cycle. So we have 120 benches that will be placed across the city in areas that are most needed. One example we had for like a neighborhood specific was the trash containers in the Austin-Brighton area. But for the most part, projects that went Any neighborhood of the city can technically benefit from them. It just depends on groups applying for the funds or if it makes sense for that neighborhood, if it's like a physical improvements.

Okay, so I just want to take a break. If anybody here wants to testify, you have two minutes. I see some folks, no? Yes, you should get two minutes, no? Anyone online? No one online? Okay. So we're going to go to a second round of questions. I guess, Councilor Flynn, I'm going to give you three minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I know one of my colleagues brought up the age of participatory budget residents that are able to vote. Is that accurate, age 11-year-old, youth age 11-year-old are able to vote on this budget?

The age range was something that was determined in collaboration with our external oversight board when we were drafting and creating the parameters of the process by looking at What other municipalities are doing with their PV process. So we also have a youth-focused participatory budgeting process.

But are they able to vote on the budget?

on the participatory budget yes yes correct yeah so we have brackets to do the analysis of the data 11 through 19 is one of those brackets okay and and they're voting on

They're voting on where taxpayer money should be spent. Is that accurate to say?

Yeah, that's correct.

I do disagree with that. I don't want to be disagreeable, but I do disagree with that 11-year-old. What is that age? I mean grade 5, grade 6 maybe. I don't think they should be voting on Millions of dollars of taxpayer money, especially when we're raising property taxes double digit two years in a row. I know most of my colleagues disagree with me. I respect their position, but I do think during these challenging times, we have to be fiscally disciplined, fiscally responsible, accountable, transparent. I just don't support 11 and 12 year old kids voting on millions of dollars where to allocate these funds because it's not our money.

It's not the city of Boston's money, it's taxpayer money. We have to remember that, that taxpayers work hard, they play by the rules, and they do want us to come to City Hall to be fiscally responsible. I don't think, and maybe you're right, maybe residents do want it because they voted for it, but I just think during these challenging economic times having 11-year-old kids voting on millions of dollars, where to allocate that funds is not appropriate. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

If I may comment on that. Yeah, of course, of course. The ideas that we receive and the development of the proposals, it is basically a community effort. We have, from what I saw, young people from like 14, 15, 16 in these meetings, and all the ages in between so the ideas that make it to the ballot at the end of the day was a collaboration of the priorities that all residents of the city want to see The voting aspect of it, as I noted on that bracket 11 to 19, is only 8% of participants who actually voted. We don't know what the actual number is for 11 or 12 year olds, but what they are voting on was decided as a collective from the city and it's a set amount of

Thank you. deciding what they want to see for their community. So just want to clarify, I see your point, up until the point in which we're voting, there was a whole process where communities decided what they wanted to see on the ballot. So that's what young people are voting for.

Yeah, thank you for your response. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for giving me The opportunity to ask another question.

Okay. Yeah, just before Councillor Culpepper, in terms of just the general numbers, like, you know, I thought we were supposed to start out, but we're only using part of the The funds available for participatory budgeting, and there'll be money left over at the end of this fiscal year, is that right? And then how much would we have, I guess, The idea is to be able to have the fund not use the entire amount every year. Is that right?

So we started with two million dollars the first cycle, 2.2 this previous one, and the The idea is to have $2 million for the upcoming PV cycle. We are able to maintain that level of funding, even though we have a decrease to our appropriations, to our special...

So I thought we didn't allocate the $2 million from the first year. Am I right about that? Correct. So we had $4 million the second year, but we used $2 million for a participatory budget. That's correct. and so at the end of this year there will be an extra two million and then we're adding 1.8 to that or is that one point uh yes that's correct okay and then the idea would be to use 1.8 or there were two.

The two million.

Use two out of the 3.8 or whatever it is.

Right, so at the end, I provided Councilor Coletta the number. So at the end of this fiscal year, we'll have 2.2 in the special revenue fund. and we'll have 1.1 coming from the FY27. So we'll have about 3 million and we'll use two out of that.

Okay, thank you. Councilor Culpepper.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Three minutes. And again, unlike my colleague, I think the young folks voting is just incredible. I really do. In fact, I think if young folks had voted, For the president, we may not have ended up with the president that we have. But let me say this. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about outreach. Because we talked a little bit earlier about that. And out of the 1,200 ideas that were collected, you held 31 co-sponsored idea collection workshops. Where were they?

In neighborhoods across the city, I could get you the exact locations. I don't have that.

You can't tell me now. You get that for me because it's important. Where are those 31 co-sponsored ideas located? emanated from because that was the beginning of it in July 2025. What about proposal development? You did five in-person forums, right? You hosted one in East Boston. One in Brighton, one in Mattapan. Was it two in City Hall? Correct. So you didn't do one in Roxbury?

We did one in Roxbury during the first year, during the first cycle.

So we are trying... Was that the July 2025 cycle?

July 2024 cycle.

Okay, so when you came to November 2025, there was... Because this is another year now, right? Fiscal year, yeah, it's another year. But you didn't, there wasn't one held in Roxville, Dorchester.

Yeah, so we are, for the events in the fall, these forums, we're trying to rotate different neighborhoods as we do different new cycles each year. So the first year we did East Boston, Roxbury, and Dorchester. That was in 2024. 2024, fall of 2024. Then fall of 2025, we did Alston, we did Marapan and we went to East Boston again. For this new cycle, we're doing Hyatt Park, Appam's Corner, and Chinatown.

Right, but my concern is that these are the proposal developments. This is where the proposal developed. and Roxbury and Dorchester, they didn't have an opportunity to develop proposals from that area of the city. And then when you go down to the voting in 2026, From January to February, there were 13 ballot proposals, and the highest voter turnout was in Jamaica Plain, Dorchester, Brighton, Alston, East Boston, and Rosendale. Again, no Roxbury. And so my concern is that if you have the idea collections in parts of the city but not Roxbury,

and then you get to the proposal development, again, not Roxbury, you get to the final voting, not Roxbury again, and that's why I wanted to see it within different districts because you don't exclude critical areas of the city that very much would probably like to be part of this.

We're not excluding anyone. Anyone can participate.

I mean, but if they're not included, then they're excluded.

They are included because we hosted, we had one of the I'm just looking at what you gave me.

When were they hosted there?

In the summer, in July of last year.

Right, so in July of last year, what you have is 31 co-sponsored idea collection workshops. That was for the collection workshops, right? Right. It doesn't say anything about any of those being in Roxbury or Dorchester. When you get to the October to November proposal development, And see, I think when you start with the ideas and the proposal development and then the voting, I think it's a building process. And I think once you start developing the idea collection and you Now, the ideas coming from certain parts of the city and then you get to the proposal development and the voting. If you don't have the ideas as part of the proposal development,

Then when you get to the voting, you'll have less voting on the areas where there was no proposal development and where there was no ideas. That's why I said from my perspective, Mr. Chair, the fairest way Thank you. Thank you. that can be citywide or districtwide, but at least you ensure that every part of the city is included in all three areas of the development for the participatory budgeting.

I'll say, you know, we try to do as much as we can with the resources we have. We did host one of the forums in Roxbury during the first cycle of the PV process, and we rotated

2024 2024 that's correct but see then you come to 2026 for the voting right two years later and you haven't done one in them for two years you're going to have less voting And let me tell you why. So you had out of 4,800 votes, 48, 41, the highest turnout was in Jamaica Plain, right? Then the next highest was in Dorchester. then Brighton and Austin and East Boston. If you look at where you held the proposal development and the idea collections, you'll see that most of that came from the areas where you have the highest voting.

I think there may be a relation there. There is also the connection of the groups that we're working with, where they are based from. We did have one of the groups being in Roxbury, so I think that's why I want to stress the importance of us having enough resources in the contracting services line to be able to work with nonprofits that work in some of those neighborhoods. One thing to clarify, if I may. Anyone can participate in these forums. I know it is difficult for someone from Roxbury to come to Alston for a forum. We did have people from East Boston and Marapan in Alston helping develop those ideas. With the capacity we have as a team, each year we want to rotate so different neighborhoods have the opportunity to host a forum in each of the neighborhoods.

So the 19 nonprofits that received the grants, where were they from?

That's the information I can get you. I don't know, top of my mind, but I can provide you the list.

And see, that's exactly what I'm pointing to. If you distribute it per district, at least I know my district, would be part of the idea collection, part of the proposal development, part of the voting, and also part of the I just want to make sure that it's fairly done and from the way I see it now, and I'm not saying you intentionally didn't do it in a way that every district was touched. But the way that it happened, every district wasn't touched. And I'm just saying and recommending maybe, Mr. Chair, we can look at it from a different perspective to make sure that every area of the city is touched so that we do get idea collection from every area of the city that we do get proposal development from every area of the city and that the voting comes from every area of the city that's all Thank you, Mr. Chair.

So we have a high school student interning with us this week. He's over there. According to his parents, he's probably the smartest student in the city, but he didn't know about participatory budgeting until researching this hearing. So we have some other... Where are we at? What high schools... No, anybody? BLA, okay. Okay, we got an O'Brien student over here, so.

Yeah.

Well, my daughter is in eighth grade at BLA. Go Dragons. We have a captive audience in schools. I don't know why. Every high school senior or whatever, you know, high school, we have an assembly and everyone walks in with a sheet of paper and we do a whatever, half an hour presentation on... They could all vote in this. Have you given any thought to that?

Yes, yes. The first year, we partnered with civics teachers from BPS. So they can discuss participatory budgeting and do the voting. Somehow, we didn't have a big turnout in votes through that effort. And this is... I know it's a population that we really want to get more involved with participatory budgeting. We're trying to find the best way to partner with BPS to do this.

OK. Yeah, no, I just, I mean, we've got Five high school kids here, they could all vote right now.

That's one of the strategies that Cambridge uses. For instance, they have great voter turnout because of that partnership. So it is something we want to continue to explore.

Okay, well, thank you very much. I think we've heard some good ideas and I know, you know, most of the council believes in this, in the work you're doing and wants to figure out a way to, you know, make it Make it more effective and more equitable so we can make the case for increasing funding in the future. So that's, okay. Nobody wants to testify in person? No? It doesn't look like it? Yeah. Thank you, I'm sorry, I'm losing my hearing on my left side. I'm not sure what that was, but okay. Well, thank you very much. I wanna thank everyone who's here and to learn and listen about it and tell your friends that we have this,

We're gonna roughly two million dollars to figure out what to do and everyone in the community gets to vote on it and decide how to use that money and let's you know let's all work on this together and thank you very much.

I do want to really thank the young folks for coming out and for sitting through this entire session so they could hear the discussion about participatory budgeting. And I really do want us to figure out some way to involve as many of the young folks as possible, because I think it's critical. that if we can involve 11-year-olds, and I say, look, let them vote on the participatory budgeting, if we can start them at 11, Can you imagine where they will be at 16 or 17 in terms of the civic process? And that's what we really want them to do, to be civically engaged. So thank you. Thank you. And when you finish in the Councilor Weber's office, young man, come on down to D7.

Okay, well, thank you very much. I'm sure Cyrus will take you up on that. Okay, well, I thank you again for being here, and thank you to central staff. Just another day in the budget hearing process. We'll be coming back. Monday. Okay. Thank you. This hearing is now adjourned.