Queens' 14 council districts may lose participatory budgeting for second year in a row
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Participatory budgeting winners gathered at City Hall for a celebration in 2018. For the second year in a row, Queens council districts will likely go without participatory budgeting. hoto by John McCarten/City Council
By David Brand
This story has been updated with information from Councilmembers Francisco Moya and Antonio Reynoso.
The entire Queens council delegation may forgo participatory budgeting for a second consecutive fiscal year, as budget restrictions and a lack of centralized support complicate the pricey process, members say.
Participatory budgeting allows each councilmember to allocate money to proposals voted on by residents of their district. The money must go to physical infrastructure projects that benefit the public, last for at least five years and cost $50,000 or more. Residents as young as 11 are eligible to vote.
In 2019, 33 of the city’s 51 councilmembers opted in to participatory budgeting, but the annual initiative was cancelled in March because of COVID-19 and did not take place during the 2020 fiscal year.
A Council spokesperson said participatory budgeting remains “on pause,” which means the body may not provide central staff support to individual members who want to engage their communities through the proposal vote this fiscal year. Members say centralized support is instrumental for fulfilling administrative needs like graphic design, ballot printing, web development, advertising and vote-tallying — costs and staff time that would otherwise fall exclusively to already-burdened district aides.
The Eagle reached out to each of Queens’ 14 councilmembers to see how they will proceed. None have committed to participatory budgeting in the absence of central staff support.
Eight say they will definitely not opt in to participatory budgeting even with Council backing. Another six say they will wait to see if the Council provides central staff support.
Councilmembers Karen Koslowitz, Barry Grodenchik, Peter Koo, Adrienne Adams, Donovan Richards, Daniel Dromm, Francisco Moya and Rory Lancman said they will not do participatory budgeting this year.
Antonio Reynoso, a Brooklyn councilmember whose district includes a piece of Ridgewood, also said he will not do participatory budgeting
Koslowitz told Queens Community Board 6 on Oct. 14 that she will use the $1 million typically earmarked for participatory budgeting to instead fund lingering capital projects before she is term-limited at the end of 2021.
“This year, I’m not going to do participatory budgeting at all,” she said. “Since this is going to be my last budget, I have projects I need to take care of.”
The proposals that won the participatory budgeting vote in Koslowitz’s Central Queens district in 2019 exemplify the type of hyper-local project that typically benefits from participatory budgeting.
The winning projects included $600,000 for bathroom renovations at six public schools and $400,000 for water bottle-filling stations at eight schools. By forgoing participatory budgeting this fiscal year, Koslowitz said she can use her discretionary budget to fund renovations at the Richmond Hill and Rego Park branches of the Queens Public Library.
Councilmember Eric ulrich co-founded participatory budgeting in 2011. He said he is not sure he will do it this year absent central council support. photo by john mccarten/city council photography
Councilmembers Eric Ulrich, Robert Holden, Jimmy Van Bramer, Costa Constantinides, I. Daneek Miller and Paul Vallone said they will wait to see whether the Council provides them with resources before making a decision on participatory budgeting.
“We love participatory budgeting and we want to do it, but we're waiting for the Speaker’s office to see if they’re going to support councilmembers with putting together materials,” Van Bramer said.
Constantinides is also considering how to introduce a version of participatory budgeting this fiscal year without Council support.
“For safety reasons, the usual process was suspended, but we’re looking at ways to ensure that the public has input on next year’s budget,” said Constantinides’ spokesperson Terence Cullen.
Ulrich was one of four councilmembers who founded participatory budgeting in New York City in 2011. A spokesperson for Ulrich said he has not yet decided how he will proceed as the district confronts acute issues related to the pandemic.
A handful of other councilmembers, including Brooklyn’s Brad Lander, say they will implement participatory budgeting even without Council assistance. Lander said his office is still figuring out how they will proceed.
Some of the Queens councilmembers choosing to sit out participatory budgeting this fiscal year have never been fans of the process.
Dromm, for example, said participatory budgeting costs too much and diverts staff from other, more pressing issues.
“It’s expensive. It costs about $40,000, which is money I’d rather put into community based organizations especially during the pandemic,” Dromm said in an email. “ I would also have to dedicate a staff member full time to the effort. I would rather have that staff person doing direct constituent services. I have many deep constituent issues which require more dedicated time to their cases from my staff.”
Lancman said the process creates an inherent imbalance — wealthier, larger and better organized groups can rally more votes, even if their favored project is less important than one backed by residents with fewer resources.
“It's a huge resource drain,” Lancman said in an email. “I've always been concerned that marginalized neighborhoods would lose out to better organized ones. It's my job to sort all that out fairly; that's what I was elected to do.”
A July study by the organization Public Agenda found that funding priorities shift as a result of participatory budgeting.
New York City council districts that adopted participatory budgeting allocated a larger proportion of their discretionary budgets to schools, streets and public housing and less to parks and recreation projects and housing preservation and development, the report found.
Supporters say the process can drive lasting community engagement.
“Opening these powers of decision making elevates the public’s views and values and helps communities and public institutions redesign and revitalize democratic problem solving,” said Public Agenda Vice President David Schleifer.
Queens Community Board 6 Chair Alexa Weitzman said participatory budgeting helped her to become more involved in local organizing and governance. She now leads her Central Queens community board.
"It's disappointing to lose participatory budgeting because it is such an important way to engage the community, especially this year,” Weitzman said.
