Participatory Budgeting Charter Amendment Will Be on the Ballot in Cleveland in November

PB CLE coalition organizers and members gathered at City Hall to submit the signatures. Credit: Maria Elena Scott

Cleveland voters will this November decide whether to put up to 2% of the city’s annual budget — about $14 million — in the hands of a participatory budgeting process.

People’s Budget Cleveland last week submitted more than 10,000 signatures from registered Cleveland voters for the ballot initiative and this week the Clerk of Cleveland City Council confirmed they had collected enough valid ones (more than 6,400) to put the issue before voters in November.

Council president Blaine Griffin, in a statement issued Wednesday evening, said “Council welcomes the opportunity for residents to offer constructive feedback to building a better Cleveland. However, I believe the proposal presented will have devastating impacts on public safety and services in our city. Council will work tirelessly in the coming months to communicate how this initiative, if approved, will negatively impact Clevelanders.”

If passed, the charter amendment would create an 11-member committee — five selected by city council, five by the mayor, and one hired as a city employee — who would gather ideas and organize voting, open to all residents older than 13, on what to use the funds for. The group says there’s no reason why the general fund would be greatly affected.

“The $14 million that PB is asking for is half of the $30 million that the Cavs are asking for for an escalator improvement despite having a recently renovated stadium,” community organizer Moses Ngong said last week. “It’s a fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars that we’ve invested in sports stadiums in the last few decades and so, if the public can make an investment on an asset that no one will ever see a return on, they can certainly make an investment on democracy and the neighborhoods that make Cleveland such a special place to live.”

Most of city council is opposed to the effort and previously shot down efforts from Mayor Justin Bibb to create a pilot program using ARPA dollars.

“I’m actually very, very concerned that this is going to have an anti-democratic effect on our city,” councilman Kris Harsh said at the time. “We cannot send a message that the government doesn’t work and try to get more people in government. Those two messages are not going to work.”

Bibb, in a statement Thursday, also came out against the effort:

This ballot issue is a permanent charter amendment rather than a pilot program. And instead of using federal funds, it will force critical cuts to other parts of the city’s budget. This is very different from the initiative I proposed.

I do not support this initiative because I truly do not believe it is in the best financial interest of Clevelanders but it’s ultimately up to the residents of the City of Cleveland to decide.

Council president Blaine Griffin has been a staunch opponent of the effort, characterizing it as an attack on council itself — “We, City Council, are the representatives of the People,” he told Signal Cleveland. “It’s kind of disingenuous, dangerous, and misleading for a group of people to promote themselves as the only group of people that has a relationship and intimate and unique understanding of the needs of our community.” — and in a recent tweet suggested that approval would be “harmful to City Services.”

Organizers argue otherwise.

Charlesretta Wynn, a PB CLE signature captain who collected 100+ signatures from her neighbors in the St. Clair Superior neighborhood, says, “The People’s Budget is important, because it gives people a new pathway to understand how change in their community can happen,” said Charlesretta Wynn, a PB CLE signature “captain” in a statement. “If we can spend millions on development downtown, we can let residents decide how a sliver of our shared budget is spent in our neighborhoods.”

*Updated to include comment from Mayor Justin Bibb.

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