Build: Participatory Budgeting for a Very Small Budget

Participatory budgeting usually means cities and millions. The pattern shrinks beautifully: a block association's dues, a community garden's plot fees, a mutual aid fund's surplus — anywhere neighbors hold shared money, they can decide together how to spend it.

Build the cycle at block scale: (1) Propose — any neighbor submits an idea with a guess at cost ('paint the fire hydrant garden', 'bulk-buy sidewalk chalk', 'a proper coffee urn for meetings'). (2) Develop — ideas get budget-checked by two volunteer 'delegates' and merged where they overlap; every idea gets a real cost and a named doer before it reaches the ballot. (3) Vote — every household gets a ballot, digital or paper, same weight; a week to vote; results public the moment polls close. (4) Do — winners get done, with photos posted to the same tool, closing the loop that makes people believe the next cycle.

The tool's job is legibility: anyone can see every idea, every cost, every vote count, and every receipt. Trust in tiny democracy is built by boring transparency.

Constraint: paper ballots count equally and are enterable by a steward — the neighbors with the strongest opinions about the coffee urn may never touch the app. And keep the cycle short: six weeks from first idea to finished project teaches more democracy than six months of process.

Details

• builds on: pb-49th-ward-chicago
• guardrails: paper ballots count equally, every winner gets done and photographed — the loop must close, six weeks, not six months
• practice kind: prompt