Participatory budgeting in Nashville

This year, I volunteered to be a budget delegate for the 2023 Participatory Budgeting process here in Nashville. I didn’t really know what I was signing up for, but it seemed like a good opportunity to get involved in my community and get an inside look at how Nashville government works. In the end, I did learn a lot about how our government works, but I can’t say that I felt like this process was a success. The core idea of participatory budgeting is a good one, but the execution of this program has a lot of flaws that keep it from being effective. Here’s a quick rundown of what I think worked and what didn’t.

What worked

Involving Nashvillians in government is always a good thing

It was great to meet some other concerned citizens and see the care and energy they put into this process. It’s always heartening to see people come together to work towards a common good, especially in a time when we see so much of the opposite.

Seeing these projects move forward will be fulfilling

After months of work, seeing some of these projects come to fruition will be a big win. I think there are many worthwhile endeavors on the list, and I’m excited to see what the city chooses.

What didn’t work

All meetings had to be in person

This is based on a state law that says that all meetings of government bodies must be public meetings. It’s not clear to me why this means they also have to all be in person, but that’s how it’s been interpreted. We had some orientations online, but when it came to meetings where actual decisions about the process were being made, all of those had to be in person.

I personally enjoy in-person collaboration, and I think it was very beneficial to have it on this project. But requiring folks to travel to a downtown location once a week for a few hours means that you’re severely limiting who can actually participate in this process. This was difficult for me, and I have every advantage. What if you don’t have reliable transportation? What if your work schedule doesn’t allow for you to make this trip?

I know that having these meetings online would also exclude some people, so there’s a balancing act here to figure out what would be the most inclusive. But I think the in-person meetings limited who could be involved, and it meant that the delegates we had couldn’t always attend every meeting.

The budget is too small

$10M sounds like quite a lot of money to me, but when compared to both the overall budget and what things actually cost, that money doesn’t go very far. A mile of sidewalk costs over $1M, for example.

Because of the limited budget, delegates were severely limited on which ideas that were submitted were even feasible financially. This is a big reason why so many of the proposed projects are park renovations/additions and traffic calming. Those are some of the only financially feasible options given the budget limitations.

Submission process is too general and not well defined

People are going to do what they do, but being clear about what you can and can’t submit, and maybe putting in some guardrails in the submission process would go a long way towards making these submissions better and more actionable. I’d estimate that over a third of the submissions (probably closer to half) were just not usable. They’d say things like, “We need more police!” or “People speed too much!” Not connected to any neighborhood or location, not connected to anything fundable.

It would be impossible to eliminate all of this, but adding some required fields that keep a submission from happening unless they are provided could potentially help here. Require an address for the issue. Insert helpful questions (“How could Metro solve this problem?” “What could Metro do to make this better?”). Force a little more thought before you can submit.

Options are practically limited by budget and departmental nonsense

I already discussed the budget limitations, but once the delegates settled on ideas, they needed to be vetted by the related governmental departments. Sometimes a project would already be on their list to be done, so we’d find something else. Sometimes, the department would just say no, we don’t want to do this, usually because it would require ongoing maintenance they didn’t want to handle. It made for a lengthy back and forth process that often seemed arbitrary to the delegates.

The only practical fix I see for this would be to have departments vet ideas before the delegates begin their work. I know that’s probably a lot of extra work, but that is what they are paid to do. Delegates are volunteering their time, and we spent more than half of our hours either eliminating unusable ideas or dealing with idea rejections from Metro. Narrowing the field before the delegates start would be helpful.

Why aren’t we funding this work in the general budget?

I asked myself this question at every meeting. Why are we having to pit these parks improvements against each other? Why isn’t Metro just building sidewalks like it’s their job (because it is!)? Why are neighborhoods having to beg for crosswalks at schools, or traffic calming, or bike lanes, or any of this stuff?

This is not what participatory budgeting should be about. I’m fundamentally opposed to the idea that citizens should have to go to this much trouble to have a functional city.

Voting seems democratic, but in practice, more affluent areas will benefit more

I don’t know how to solve this one, but it’s no secret that the Green Hills and Bellevues of the world vote in greater numbers than less affluent areas. I don’t see how this will be any different, and since these projects are district based, most people will vote for projects in their districts. That leads to more investment in areas that are already doing just fine. In my mind, that’s counter to the spirit of this endeavor.

Selection process is too rushed to consider creative ways to combine ideas

Because there’s no vetting of these ideas beforehand, much of the process for the volunteers focuses on weeding out ideas that don’t qualify. That leaves precious little time to consider all of the possibilities of the ones that do remain.

Can two similar ideas be combined? Can multiple ideas in the same area become one big idea? Are there nonprofits or other organizations that could help realize the more ambitious ideas? The budget delegates did their best to consider questions like these, but time constraints made it impossible to explore all the options.

Not what I expected

My prior exposure to the concept of participatory budgeting was through organizations like the Nashville People’s Budget Coalition. Their mission, according to their Facebook page:

This is certainly not that. The Participatory Budgeting delegates are not charged with any aspect of truly deciding the city’s priorities. There was no real engagement with city officials beyond the people running this program, and no engagement with community groups to have meaningful discussions about what Nashville should spend its resources on. I should have been better informed going into this for sure, but I was disappointed with the limited scope of this program.

This program ultimately boils down to selecting some feel good projects to fund with a tiny slice of money from Metro. It’s a nice PR piece for Metro, and it does allow folks that are likely disenfranchised from voting otherwise to have some sort of say in the growth of our city.

Does it provide meaningful value to Nashville though? In the end, I don’t really think so. We’d be better served by simply prioritizing neighborhoods and these quality of life capital projects in the budget itself, and perhaps adding this $10M to the Barnes Fund and calling it a day. The other, better alternative would be to truly fund this at a meaningful level and bring together government officials, citizens and community groups to truly discuss the priorities of our city. That would give this idea of participatory budgeting the influence and power it deserves.