1. Topic Idea

Could participatory budgeting like that started in Porto Alegre Brazil and now used in a number of citites in the world, work for Ottawa and, if so, what role could social media play in making it work?

2. Key Points

The central idea is simple: people deciding how a portion of their city's budget is spent. City workers train citiizen representatives in the budgeting process and the citizen reps decide how the money will be spent based on recommendations from the citizens. It is a very collaborative process between the city and the citizens.

See this excellent FAQ on Participatory Budgeting from the group Church Action on Poverty that runs the British government's Participatory Budget Unit.

3. Takeaways

Participatory budgeting notes
-Personal introductions
-Partial explanation of the Porto Alegre participatory budgeting model
--Education of participants in the process and what budgets are
---Budgetting process is stratified and geographically distributed.
---Reclaimed the budget lines
-Partial explanation of Co-op housing model in Ottawa where individuals from diverse backgrounds engage in budget and planning process
--Different levels of engagement among members of the co-op (say 10% quite involved), different budget funds for diverse areas of risk, and the process evolves.
---Enforcement mechanisms are difficult to carry out, but collectively carried out
-Citizen's assembly description where the process was driven from above (government) as opposed to from below (the citizenry), however it was not successful in getting MMP passed
--Ordinary citizens were educated about different voting systems by the province and put forward a recommendation for the adoption of the electorate.
-Ottawa has a process whereby different regions (wards? neighbourhoods?)can have different levels of service if they are willing to pay more?????
-Don't even know how you would get the numbers of people involved in the process in Ottawa that they have succeeded in getting involved in Brazil.
-In Ottawa 2020? there was a massive education campaign to invite everyone to provide their vision for  how Ottawa would be built after amalgamation.
-Could you do a pilot project (for Ottawa) in some/a particular area, or a section of the budget?
-In the movie “Us, now,” people make pitches for the use of public money that can then be funded.
-Lobby the city for an amount of money for social action, then have people make their pitches, a voting process for what gets funded, an evaluation process, an audit process, and then you have your project.
-Participatory budgeting already exists in Canada through things like school boards, albeit school boards aren't perfect and some jurisdictions have been restricting school boards ability to spend their own money.

4. Next Steps/Action Items

Contact your councillor. If they were there in 2004, ask them how they voted on Clive Doucet's 2004 Participatory Budgeting proposal and why. If they weren't there, ask them how they would vote now and why. Robin Browne (@RobinBrowne) is going to contact councillor Clive Doucet to find out why his proposal didn't pass and, depending on the answer, ask what he thinks about trying again.

5. Information 

Porto Alegre Wikipedia entry

Britian's Participatory Budget Unit website  [1]

Britian's Participatory Budget  FAQ from which Robin was reading

Ottawa City Councillor Clive Doucet's 2003 speech in Porto Alegre,Brazil. Creating Inclusive Cities and the Struggle for Local and Global Democracy delivered at the Mayors and City Councillors World Forum for Inclusive Cities.