Last summer, residents of three Rhode Island cities were asked to figure out how to spend nearly $1.4 million.

Teenagers as young as 13 were asked to participate, all the way up to to adults well into their 70s. Some live not far from the neighborhood they grew up in. Others immigrated to the United States from Central America and Haiti. These communities — Central Falls, Pawtucket, and two zip codes in central Providence — also include undocumented immigrants who have never voted in a US election.

The participating communities are predominantly people of color, have historically been underinvested in, and are locations where COVID-19 and unemployment wreaked havoc.

The $1 million set aside for central Providence and the $385,000 for Pawtucket and Central Falls to share seemed like a ginormous amount of money that could solve a lot of problems — from rising housing costs to unpaid debt. On the other hand, these official federal dollars didn’t seem like enough to address their neighborhoods’ most blatant dilemmas to the extent that ordinary people — like themselves — would be affected.

But why residents to figure out solutions, instead of staffers at city hall? Becki Marcus calls it “direct democracy in action.”

Read the full article about participatory budgeting by Alexa Gagosz at LISC.