Bottcher Goes Sports Announcer Mode to Unveil Who Won Big in Participatory Budget Vote

Three projects involving trees, public school bathrooms, and Theater District pedestrian upgrades will be splitting $1 million, as City Council District 3’s participatory budget vote has come to a close.

With a 50 percent increase in votes from 2022, the district--which includes a range of neighborhoods including Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen, Greenwich Village, Hudson Square, Flatiron, Times Square, the Theater District, and the Garment District--settled on the victors after pulling in 3,333 votes.

The winning project, with 2,199 votes and costing $350,000, is a street tree-beds expansion. It will enlarge street tree beds to capture storm water runoff and promote tree health.

The second-place winner is a renovation of public school bathrooms, receiving 1,885 votes and costing $450,000. The schools singled out for renovation are Quest to Learn (at 351 W. 18th St.), the High School of Fashion Industries (at 225 W. 24th St.), and the NYC iSchool (at 131 6th Ave.)

The third winner is a series of Theatre District pedestrian safety upgrades, which will include measures such as curb extensions on numerous streets. It received 1,593 votes and will cost around $300,000.

Bottcher’s office singled out the High Line Teens program for praise in his press release, in addition to thanking community volunteers of all stripes.

According to the City Council’s website, the establishment of participatory budgeting as a civic staple was pioneered in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1989. It was imported to NYC in 2011 by councilmembers Brad Lander, Melissa Mark-Viverito, Eric Ulrich, and Jumaane D. Williams, and now commands a whopping thirty million dollars of the annual fiscal budget.

Participatory budgeting is designed to be a more democratic and transparent alternative (or supplement) to the budgeting process in Albany, with community members outlining competing civic projects that, if they win the necessary votes, are locally implemented.

The participatory budgeting cycle undergoes four formal steps each year. From September to October, idea collection and volunteer recruitment occurs among community stakeholders, which are then developed into full-blown proposals with assistance from city agencies by January. From March to April, proponents of various proposals get out the vote and have a nine-day voting marathon to determine the winners. These will be officially integrated into the rest of the state budget by June.

In one of the more unusual aspects of the vote, one doesn’t have to be an 18 year-old citizen to cast a ballot. Participants as young as eleven-years old can vote--citizens and non-citizens alike--provided they reside within the boundaries of their respective council district.

In a comment to Chelsea News, Councilmember Bottcher said: “This was a historically close Participatory Budgeting vote in our district, with only 8 votes separating fourth and third place. I am so excited to fund our winners, but the really great thing about PB is that it shows us what people in the district really want to see their taxpayer dollars spent on. I intend to fight for all projects that were on the ballot, and hope to fund a great many of them during my time in office, since they are high priority for district residents.”