As city council prepares to discuss a fall adjustment to Edmonton's budget, the city has shelved participatory budgeting due to how much time and effort it takes, but said it will nonetheless carry forward learning from the work for future grants.
Participatory budgeting is the allocation of public funds for community projects based on community input. It began in Brazil in the 1980s, and helped reduce infant mortality rates there by boosting funds for sanitation and health services. In Edmonton, a community-based budget model took place over two rounds in 2022 and 2023. Councillors Keren Tang and Andrew Knack both participated in 2022, while Knack bowed out in 2023. Also in 2023, city administration separately piloted the participatory model in Balwin and Belvedere to distribute neighbourhood revitalization money.
Tang told Taproot that increasing the visibility of public spending can improve trust, which is needed. "I think right now we're seeing this trend around the world of distrust in institutions, in public institutions and governments," Tang said. "I think processes where you can increase transparency, in whatever way that means to you, I think it's all the better, and that's why I really believed in (community-based budgeting)."
But Tang said the work needed to perform participatory budgeting is considerable. In 2022, Tang and Knack were able to fully fund nine of 18 community project pitches that cost between $500 and $2,000 in 2022, and seven further projects in 2023 (further details are in an evaluation report). In 2023, Tang spearheaded the budgeting with just two office staff, who took on the work on top of everyday duties.
"If you think about the job of an elected office, it's none of this," Tang said. "It's responding to emails and phone calls, it's resolving complaints, it's following up with 311, it's reading reports, and developing policy briefs. It's not community building, right? So, we were doing this off the side of our desk, especially in our second year."
Some of the 2023 projects spilled over into 2024, but Tang did not run another round this year and has no current plan to do so again. She said she always hoped community-based budgeting could move to city administration's workload. But the city's team who worked on the Balwin and Belvedere pilot reported back that they, too, found participatory budgeting unsustainable in its full form.
"It was really resource-intensive in terms of the number of people, but then also the number of hours that were invested," Kim Turcotte, the community grants team lead in the social development department at the City of Edmonton, told Taproot. "Over 300 hours ended up going into this project in a period of four to five months. Normally, a process like this is a longer-term project — like 12 to 18 months."
Those 300 hours were divided between 13 city staff from the communications and engagement departments, among others. The work resulted in $69,000 in neighbourhood revitalization funds spent on six projects. Residents, business owners, non-profit organizations, and even grade school students all got a say in an online voting process and an in-person gathering. The organizations that executed the projects were KARA Family Resource Centre, the Belvedere Community League, the Balwin Community League, Trinity Christian Reformed Church, Balwin School, and Princeton School.
"Some of the criticism that we got was that it felt a bit like a popularity vote," Turcotte said. "Princeton School did a mural project. Their kids obviously voted on their own project. They also, though, were really engaged. They went out and did some door-knocking. There are some really amazing outcomes that have come out of that project for the students who were involved, but there was a feeling of, well, did that create an inequity?"
Still, Turcotte said the lessons from these experiments are informing how the city grants money, including in its anti-racism funding stream. Community volunteers were added to the assessment of those grants last year, and their feedback led to adding honoraria and additional training on what anti-racism means this year. More is still to come.
Coun. Keren Tang has spent more than two years on community-based budgeting projects in her ward, but said she now hopes her findings take on a new life. She's pictured here with representatives of Step Up YEG, who worked on the Guide to Ward Karhiio community directory. (Supplied)
"Part of (adjusting grant processes) is from the learnings of participatory budgeting, and part of it is just our efforts at continuous improvement," Turcotte said. "My perspective is every time we do a grant process, we need to be learning from it. We need to be growing from it, and we need to be trying new and different things."
Some feedback on participatory budgeting and the city's granting processes has been critical. Turcotte said she's heard that calls for applicants can be heavy with jargon, and that grassroots organizations without a legal incorporation status are frustrated by their ineligibility for public funds.
"We've actually helped these organizations be introduced to a legal entity that is willing to be a fiscal agent on their behalf," Turcotte said. "(The partner organizations can) help to bridge those relationships so that some of these smaller, more informal grassroots organizations are still able to apply and potentially receive funding through the City of Edmonton."
Both Tang and Turcotte said a key principle of participatory budgeting is that it's not about signing a cheque and walking away. Tang remains in conversation with ward residents who participated in community-based budgeting, and Turcotte has heard from more than one granting cohort that they want to gather upon project completion and learn from one another. Stakeholders in the 2023 anti-racism grant round convened in mid-November to exchange knowledge and deepen connections.
"Some really good connections happened as a result of that," Turcotte said. "That will likely continue to happen as part of a lot of our grant processes. Probably not all of them because, again, it does take time and resources, but there's certain grant programs like the anti-racism (one), where it really makes sense to be able to start to create that sense of community, and to help so people don't feel like they're working on this issue alone. It's pretty complex."
The city is further using the experience to change final reporting for grantees. Recipients of operating grants were offered new options such as the option to meet with city staff, participate in a circle with other funded organizations to exchange learning, or simply submit the standard report report online.
Tang, meanwhile, has ideas for where participatory or community-based budgeting could happen in Edmonton.
"I'm agnostic," she said. "I think any process that can increase transparency and engagement from the populace is all the better. If you can embed that in a (business improvement area), with a community league, within a business, even within a corporation, that's great. I think this is a great way to engage your employees and your membership."
One project operating at the fringes of the municipal government is already using principles of participatory budgeting. We Belong in Jasper Place by the Stony Plain Road Business Association and communications partners launched in 2023. This year, it has allotted almost $50,000 to 11 projects meant to increase a sense of belonging for the community. Now, it's in the midst of a series of community gatherings to help shape the project's future.