New York City participatory budgeting: council districts, The People’s Money and what the evidence shows

New York City participatory budgeting (PBNYC) is a process in which residents of participating City Council districts propose and vote on capital projects paid from their council member’s discretionary funds; it began in 2011 with four council members.⁠¹ In the cycle announced in May 2026, 22 districts took part, nearly 130,000 residents aged 11 and older voted, and almost $25 million in capital funding was allocated.⁠² Since 2022 the city’s Civic Engagement Commission, created by a 2018 charter amendment, has also run a citywide program called The People’s Money, which allocates a few million dollars of expense funding each cycle.⁠^3,6,7

Participatory budgeting is usually traced to Porto Alegre, Brazil; see /cases/porto-alegre-participatory-budgeting/. This page covers the New York version only.

What happened

New York City’s program grew from a four-district pilot into a recurring council practice and then a citywide program. The dated record below is verified for this page.

• 2011. Council Members Brad Lander, Melissa Mark-Viverito, Eric Ulrich and Jumaane D. Williams launched a participatory budgeting process.⁠¹
• 2012. The voting age was lowered to 16 and the age for taking part in assemblies and project development to 14, according to Celina Su.⁠¹⁰ The first rulebook had allowed residents over 18, including undocumented immigrants, to vote.⁠¹⁰
• 2014. Twenty-two of 51 council members took part, covering roughly 4 million constituents, and about $25 million was allocated.⁠¹⁰
• November 2018. New York City voters approved three ballot proposals from the 2018 Charter Revision Commission, which established the Civic Engagement Commission under Chapter 76 of the City Charter.⁠³ One of its duties is to “run a citywide participatory budgeting program with guidance from a participatory budgeting advisory committee”.⁠³
• September 2022 to June 2024. The first cycle of The People’s Money allocated $5 million from the city’s expense budget, with a borough process and a process for 33 neighborhoods identified by the Taskforce on Racial Inclusion and Equity.⁠⁶
• 2023 to 2025. The second cycle allocated $3.5 million, and the city reports that more than 100,000 New Yorkers voted.⁠⁷
• 2024 to 2026. The third and fourth cycles each allocated $4 million from the expense budget.⁠^8,9
• April 11 to 19, 2026. The council’s districtwide vote ran for nine days.⁠¹ The Council called this its 15th cycle and said it drew “the most votes by New Yorkers since its inception”.⁠²
• October 14 to November 18, 2026. Idea generation opened for the next citywide cycle, with a vote planned for spring 2027 and implementation from fall 2027 to fall 2028.⁠⁵

How it worked

New York City runs two separate participatory budgeting programs with different money, sponsors and rules.

Council district PB (PBNYC)

• Sponsor and money. Each participating council member sets aside part of the capital discretionary funds allocated to that member’s district. Su describes these as “small pots of money, organized by city council district”.⁠¹⁰ Only some council members take part: 22 organized PB in their districts in the 2026 cycle.⁠²
• What qualifies. The Council states that PBNYC funds physical infrastructure projects in public spaces that “cost at least $50,000 and have a lifespan of at least 5 years”.⁠¹ Su gives an example of the capital rule: laptops could qualify while iPads did not.⁠¹⁰
• Eligibility. Voting is “open to all residents of participating districts who are 11 years of age and older”.⁠² The first rulebook had a higher age and allowed undocumented immigrants to vote.⁠¹⁰
• Steps. Residents propose ideas, delegates develop them into proposals, and residents vote. Su notes that city officials decide which proposals are “feasible” and that delegates often lack grounding in budget rules.⁠¹⁰
• Binding status. In this page’s reading, results are carried out through the sponsoring council member’s allocation, so the commitment rests on that member rather than on a legal mandate; no source verified here describes a statutory duty.

The People’s Money (citywide)

• Sponsor and money. The Civic Engagement Commission runs it.⁠⁴ Funding comes from the city’s expense budget, not the capital budget: $5 million in the first cycle, $3.5 million in the second and $4 million in the third and fourth.⁠^6,7,8,9
• Eligibility. The second cycle was open to New Yorkers aged 11 and older “regardless of immigration or incarceration status”.⁠⁷ The program describes itself as “open to all New Yorkers, including youth and immigrants”.⁠⁵
• Steps. Idea generation, borough assemblies that shape the ballot, a vote, and implementation by partner organizations.⁠^5,6,8 In the third cycle the city selected 20 partners to carry out winning ideas.⁠⁸
• Equity targeting. The first cycle set aside a separate process for 33 neighborhoods most affected by COVID-19 and other disparities, open only to their residents.⁠⁶

Measured results

New York’s results are reported by the Council and the Commission, and analyzed by several peer-reviewed studies.

Participation and money

The first citywide cycle drew 12,344 people to idea workshops and 4,139 ideas⁠⁶ Scale is the main limit. Su compared the roughly $25 million in 2014 to a $75 billion operating budget and a $6 billion capital budget, calling it “a tiny fraction”.⁠¹⁰ By this page’s own arithmetic, $25 million is about 0.4% of $6 billion.

Who took part

• Su reported that in District 8, residents earning $10,000 or less were 4% of 2009 council election voters but 22% of PB voters; that half of 2014 PB voters had never worked with others on a community issue; and that one third were foreign-born.⁠¹⁰
• Hayduk, Hackett and Tamashiro Folla found that immigrant participation grew “from nineteen to twenty-eight percent of all PB voters,” while still lagging immigrants’ share of the population, with large variation across districts.⁠¹²
• Kuenneke and Scutelnicu Todoran, using council and census data, found that districts with more Asian American and mixed-race residents had a higher share of PB voters, while Black and Hispanic residents and women “were not significant predictors”.⁠¹⁵

What changed

• Spending priorities. Hagelskamp, Silliman, Godfrey and Schleifer, using ten years of council capital allocations (2009 to 2018), found that when districts adopted PB, greater proportions of discretionary capital went to schools, streets and traffic, and public housing, with less to parks and housing preservation.⁠¹³
• A skeptical reading. Calabrese, Williams and Gupta found that participating officials “fund more projects at lower average amounts” but “do not change the areas of funding,” which they attribute to a system of legislator-controlled earmarks.⁠¹⁴
• Services. Sihotang, using staggered adoption and a difference-in-differences design, found PB associated with lower total 311 complaint rates but no evidence of effects on specific complaints such as potholes or school maintenance.⁠¹⁶
• Distribution. Su cited a finding that census block groups receiving PB allocations had 20% higher shares of minority residents and of families below the poverty line.⁠¹⁰

Failures and criticisms

New York’s program draws criticism from advocates who want it bigger, from scholars who doubt it changes much, and from those concerned about who participates.

• Too small to matter. Su reported that agency representatives argued PB money is too small to fund major capital projects, which need cross-district coordination.⁠¹⁰ The citywide program uses a few million dollars a cycle.⁠^6,7,8
• Capital-only limits. Council PB funds only physical projects of at least $50,000 with five-year lifespans,⁠¹ so services, staffing and programs residents may value most are outside its scope. The People’s Money uses expense funds partly to address this.⁠⁶
• Officials hold the gate. City officials decide which proposals are feasible, and Su argued participants may favor ideas agencies will approve over local concerns.⁠¹⁰ Participation also depends on each council member choosing to opt in.⁠²
• Equity remains elusive. Su’s 2017 introduction to a journal symposium concluded that “of all of PBNYC’s multiple goals, equity has proven to be the most elusive”.⁠¹¹ She also noted that districts concentrate wealth or poverty, so redistribution stays small without citywide money.⁠¹⁰
• Earmark politics. Calabrese and colleagues argue that PB embedded in council discretionary funds behaves like the earmark system it sits in.⁠¹⁴
• Depoliticization. Su warned that PB can treat residents as consumers making technical choices rather than as political actors.⁠¹⁰
• Reporting gaps. Official pages verified for this page do not give voter counts for several citywide cycles, and the second-cycle page lists conflicting vote dates.⁠⁷ Delivery timelines for completed projects were not verified.

What transferred and what did not

New York adapted a Brazilian model to a city where council members, not a mayor’s office, controlled the money. That design traveled within the city: from a four-member pilot to a recurring council practice,⁠^1,2 and then into the City Charter through the Civic Engagement Commission.⁠³ Lowering the voting age and opening the vote to noncitizens was a local choice later carried into the citywide program.⁠^7,10 What did not transfer from Porto Alegre was scale: New York’s amounts remain a small fraction of the budget.⁠¹⁰ For a European comparison with a much larger share of city investment, see /cases/paris-participatory-budget/.

Lessons for My Vote Forward

The following points are interpretation and design proposals, not findings about My Vote Forward, which has not been tested.

• Report the share, not only the total. “$25 million” sounds large until compared with the budget.⁠¹⁰ Any release should show what fraction of the decision the public controlled; see published releases.
• Eligibility is a design choice. New York votes at 11 and without citizenship rules.⁠^2,7 Any framework should state who counts and why; see representation and access and exclusion.
• Compare participants to the population. The immigrant and equity studies,⁠^12,15 show the value of measuring who took part against who lives there; see measurement.
• Measure outcomes with comparison groups. The spending and 311 studies⁠^13,14,16 used non-PB districts as controls; see evaluation.
• Separate agenda from feasibility. When officials screen ideas⁠¹⁰ publish what was screened out and why; see proposals.

Unresolved questions

• What does Johnson, Carlson and Reynolds’s 2021 Political Behavior study find about PB and later voter turnout.⁠¹⁷? Its abstract could not be retrieved, so its findings are not reported here.
• How long do council PB projects take to deliver, and how many are delayed or cancelled? No official completion data was verified for this page.
• How many people voted in the first, third and fourth citywide cycles? The pages verified here do not say⁠^6,8,9
• What did the Community Development Project evaluation reports find? Their former site no longer serves them.
• Would a larger citywide share change the equity results Su describes⁠^10,11?