How to Spend 'the People's Money'

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Tiffany Hansen** (0:40)
It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Tiffany Hansen filling in for Brian today. Well, there is a lot of budget talk these days.
The New York State budget was finalized finally. The New York City budget is due at the end of the month, as is New Jersey's state budget, and governors, mayors, legislators, all hashing this out. Did you know that you have a say in how some of the city money gets spent? Voting is open now for deciding how to spend, quote, the people's money. It's part of a citywide participatory budgeting process that's been going on since last fall, but now is the time to cast your ballot. This process comes from the New York City Civic Engagement Commission, or the CEC.
We're joined now by Sarah Sayeed, the Chair and Executive Director of the CEC, and Yazmany. See, Yazmany? I had it right when we were off air, and here I am now messing it up. Yazmany Arboleda. That's right. I did it. Okay. Yazmany Arboleda, who is an artist, educator, community organizer, who is the CEC's designated people's artist. Welcome to both of you. Thank you.

**Sarah Sayeed** (1:50)
Thank you so much. Yeah.

**Yazmany Arboleda** (1:52)
I'm grateful to be here.

**Tiffany Hansen** (1:52)
Thank you. All right. So, Sarah, I just want to talk about this process of participatory budgeting because I think it's confusing to some people. So if you can just help us delineate a little bit about, there's the overall budgeting process that most of us have no involvement. There is a part of the budgeting process that is a participatory budgeting.
This is even separate from that. So can you just lay out a little bit how these are all differentiated from each other?

**Sarah Sayeed** (2:21)
Sure. I just want to first begin by thanking you for having us on the show to talk about a less told story which is about participatory budgeting. Absolutely. Also want to just acknowledge that the listeners of this show are probably super civically engaged anyway, and as we are listening and you are listening to this show, I encourage you to think about the people in your network and the family members that you have and the friends that you have, the neighbors that you have because to support civic engagement relationships are really important. So I want you to be thinking about how you can share this story with the community. So the reason why we're here today is that the Civic Engagement Commission was created by voters in 2018 with a mandate to strengthen civic engagement and strengthen democracy in New York City. And participatory budgeting was part of that mandate, citywide participatory budgeting in particular. And as you mentioned, there is participatory budgeting. People may be familiar with that. City Council has been doing that for some time now.
How this process is different is that we are a citywide process. When council members run citywide, when they run participatory budgeting, it is opt-in. So not every council member does it. That means that there are many council districts, probably about half, that are not doing participatory budgeting through the city council.
Their process also focuses on building things, whether it's parks or cultural centers. And our process is more focused on programs and services. And the other thing that makes this process different is that people see the results of their participation within a year. So all the projects that are selected through this process will get implemented in a year.

**Tiffany Hansen** (4:08)
Whereas the process of participatory budgeting with a specific council member might take two or more years. Is the purpose of this really truly just civic, not just, but civic engagement?

**Sarah Sayeed** (4:24)
It is. It is a very important pathway and opportunity doorway to civic engagement, if you will. It is New York City's widest on-ramp to democracy, as we call it, because anyone 11 years and older can participate in this process, regardless of their citizenship or immigration status.
And it is giving New Yorkers a direct say on how to spend $4 million, which is different from voting for a representative who makes a decision for you. This is New Yorkers directly voting. We take their votes and the most popular projects get implemented.