By Mandile Mpofu

It’s a rainy Sunday, and Somerville resident Rana McLaughlin wants to take her two kids to the local library or, perhaps, the pool. There’s only one problem: they’re closed. This scenario has played out often for McLaughlin, so when the City of Somerville introduced its inaugural Participatory Budget, she knew exactly the project to propose: keep the Ginny Smithers Pool and Library open on Sundays when families are most available. Her idea is just one of more than 700 that the city must parse through before putting the top 20 to a vote.

In 2022, the city announced its first ever Participatory Budget, an initiative that would let residents decide how it would spend $1 million of its fiscal 2023 budget. Since March 20, 2023, residents have been able to add ideas to a map on the official website, pbsomervillema.poepublic.com, or submit suggestions via telephone.

McLaughlin, 41, has been living in Somerville for 13 years, and while she said it’s “a great place to be” and an ideal location for retirement, she has some frustrations with how the city has handled its budget in the past.

“My husband and I are always asking ourselves, ‘What is the city doing with all this tax money?’ Our taxes [have] gone through the roof since we moved in,” she said. “We’re sleeping in the same place, paying double the taxes and not really seeing many changes from the city.”

Megan Huckenpahler, a budget analyst for the city, said the government intends to see this project to the end. “We wouldn’t start this program if we didn’t think that we could,” she said. “But I think we just have to show and put our money where our mouths are.”

In some respects, the initiative is already a success. The city has already surpassed its goals of 100-250 idea submissions. Huckenpahler attributes this to how engaged Somerville residents are as well as the awareness of the City of Cambridge’s long-running Participatory Budget, which Somerville used as a model.

“What [Participatory Budgeting] really does is allows us to also get feedback from the community on some creative ways they’d like to see the city improved, and then engage residents in how we think about what those improvements are going to be,” Huckenpahler said.

The City of Somerville still has some work to do, though. In 2022, Somerville had a population of approximately 79,000, with 74% of those identifying as White, according to recent estimations from the U.S. Census Bureau.

While Huckenpahler and her team did targeted outreach to marginalized groups, she said Black and Hispanic communities as well as younger populations are still underrepresented. She and her team will focus on rectifying this in the latter half of the idea submission phase, which ends on May 20, 2023.

Alyssa Rae McGinn, 32, a Title IX consultant, added her idea as soon as the website opened to the public. Her project proposal: a dog park for “our four-legged residents.” She said off leash spaces are scarce in her area, and her suggestion has been “hearted” 35 times, making it one of the topmost supported. McGinn, a Somerville resident of two years, is optimistic that the Participatory Budget will yield good results. “I generally have found that the Somerville government is fairly well run, maybe just compared to other places I’ve lived,” she said. “So, I’ll say I have hope that we’ll see some improvements out of this.”

To get the word out about the Participatory Budget, the city sent out a mailer to every resident and posted on its social media accounts.

Deb Azrael, 61, who found out about the budget through the city’s outreach efforts, wants Somerville to invest in restrooms near public parks and pedestrian-friendly streets in high-traffic zones, among other things.

Azrael has lived in Somerville since 1983 and said it has changed significantly, even in the last 10 years. Now, the city has “a lot more privilege” and “a lot more money,” which puts it in a better position to successfully execute the initiative. However, she said the city will likely implement the ideas it had already planned to prioritize even without a Participatory Budget in place.

“It seems like a fairly safe bet that ideas will bubble up that the city wanted to have happen in any case,” Azrael said. “I mean, it wouldn’t surprise if me if things that the city already had as budget priorities just wind up being ratified by this process.”

Azrael also has concerns that this effort will be a one-off project. Huckenpahler said in an email to The Somerville Times that “the city plans on continuing [Participatory Budgeting] on an annual basis.”

Huckenpahler also said the city aims to give residents regular updates on the process, as transparency will be key in maintaining trust and encouraging participation. Currently, the city is looking for budget delegate volunteers who will decide which 20 ideas get put to a vote in October 2023.

Beth Forrest, 53, a Somerville resident since 1995, would like the city to spend part of its $1 million budget on vertical gardens, which she said would beautify neighborhoods and improve residents’ mental health. She said developers have had a “far louder voice” than residents, but the Participatory Budget is a “great step” on the part of the new administration.

“I just hope that it really does improve the city for as many people as possible or the people who are most in need,” she said. “And it would be nice if it is something that has a legacy, rather than spend it and then whatever it goes to sort of disappears in a few years.

Mandile Mpofu is a Boston-based multimedia journalist. She is earning her master’s degree in journalism from Boston University.