In 2026, Slavic Village residents will decide how to invest $100,000 in their community. No city officials or foundation leaders will tell them how to do it. A committee of their neighbors will design the entire process, from outreach to brainstorming to voting, and if all goes to plan, by the end of the summer Cleveland will join the list of cities around the world experimenting with participatory budgeting.
“I’m excited, for sure,” said Najah Muhammad, program manager for People’s Budget Cleveland (PB CLE), the organization supporting the Slavic Village project.
Participatory budgeting gives citizens direct say over how some public money is spent. More than 7,000 cities around the world have tried it at least once, according to the Participatory Budgeting Project. In 2023, PB CLE led an effort to change the Cleveland charter to put residents in charge of spending 2% of the city’s budget (about $14 million), but the effort fell short amid strong opposition from most local elected officials.
PB CLE regrouped and this year opted for a different, smaller-scale approach — a pilot program in one neighborhood, funded with grant money. Slavic Village was chosen from communities across the city based on criteria that included historic disinvestment and grassroots support for the project.
PB CLE got the ball rolling in October, at the Trick or Treat on Fleet event. Since then, 13 people — 12 residents and one longtime former resident who still works in the neighborhood — have joined the project steering committee. Two high schoolers are expected to join soon.
Muhammad was especially excited about the people who applied for the committee because they wanted to be more involved in their community but “just didn’t know how to get started.” That’s what participatory budgeting is about, she said — funding is just part of it.
“This program is developing leadership in a new way that’s kind of changing the way we look at what’s possible in our neighborhood and what a group of committed neighbors can do,” Muhammad said.
Building a democratic process from scratch
In the first phase, the steering committee will design the entire process, everything from how they work with each other to the guidelines for pitching and developing proposals to the rules for voting.
Muhammad and PB CLE’s program coordinator, Cassie Park, will support the committee, but the members will make all decisions.
In the second phase, beginning in or around March, the committee will “open the door for people in the community to start sharing ideas,” Muhammad said. Voting could begin in June, but the schedule is intentionally flexible.
Participatory budgeting “is not a new process, but it’s definitely new for Cleveland, and it does require some opening your imagination and kind of reimagining how we do governance,” Muhammad said.
You can follow the progress of the pilot project on PB CLE’s Facebook and Instagram accounts.
