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The ballot initiative that would let Portlanders vote on how to spend 2% of the city’s annual budget has cleared the final hurdle on the way to the November ballot. Portland’s City Auditor announced Wednesday that it had verified at least 41,860 signatures gathered for the Community Budgeting for All initiative, safely above the 40,437 needed to qualify for the ballot.
The initiative submitted 78,743 signatures to the city on the July 6 deadline, the largest number ever submitted for a city ballot initiative. The city rejected 1,759 of those, and sent the remaining 76,984 to the county. The county randomly selected and verified a sample of the signatures. Enough of them were verified to place the initiative on the ballot.
The Community Budgeting for All initiative would require the Portland City Council to establish a participatory budgeting program. Under that program, city residents would suggest ideas for how to spend 2% of the city budget, citizen delegates would shape those ideas into project proposals, and the concepts would receive a citywide vote. The proposed amendment to the city charter does not specify how that vote would be conducted, except that it would not be subject to city or state election laws.
Your 2 Cents PDX, the campaign behind the initiative, estimates that under the program Portlanders would direct around $16-17 million annually from the city’s general fund.
More than 100 cities in the U.S. and more than 7,000 worldwide use participatory budgeting, according to Your 2 Cents. The most prominent is New York City, which launched its program in 2011.
The other ballot initiative that submitted enough signatures to potentially qualify for the ballot has so far not been verified. That initiative would reroute 25% of the Portland Clean Energy Fund to hiring police officers. It’s been embroiled in controversy since early June, when reports began emerging that canvassers for the initiative seemed to be misleading the public about what the initiative would actually do.
