PBP is excited to announce the official launch of Participatory Budgeting Chicago! Together with the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois Chicago, we’re working four Aldermen and over 20 organizations to pilot a joint PB process in four Chicago wards. After  working with Alderman Joe Moore to start PB in the 49th Ward in 2009, this new initiative will begin to scale PB up. Over the next year, residents in the participating wards will directly decide how to spend over $4 million in capital funding.

For more information, see the website and Facebook page of PB Chicago, and read the press release from today’s press conference at Chicago City Hall: ALDERMEN & COMMUNITY GROUPS PILOT NEW MODEL OF DEMOCRATIC BUDGETING FOR CHICAGO

As Maria Hadden, PBP Project Coordinator, said at the press conference, “Chicago is a city of grassroots organizing and democratic values. The fact that participatory budgeting in the United States began here fits with the city’s history of leading progressive change. The city of Chicago has joined over 1,500 other cities around the world in including meaningful, participatory community engagement in their public budgeting process.”