The Budget Delegates began their work in June. They were informed about the commitment, schedule, and legal framework of their tasks. If they agreed to proceed, they participated in Finance and Legal training sessions and interacted with staff from various Metro departments to understand how these departments are involved in the Participatory Budgeting program. The following departments provided presentations:
- Parks
- Arts
- Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA)
- Water and Sewer (WS)
- Nashville Electric Service (NES)
- Affordable Housing
- Health
- Grants
- Nashville Department of Transportation (NDOT)
- Homelessness
- Historic Preservation
On June 20 the period for collecting ideas concluded, resulting in 1321 submissions.
2023 Participatory Budgeting Ideas
The Budget Delegates received guidelines that were adopted, a delegate workbook, the legislative documents that established the program, and additional information such as biographies and grant details. They then began the process of eliminating ideas that didn't meet the eligibility criteria and merging duplicate ideas.
Around mid-July, based on the quantity and categories of ideas submitted, the delegates formed Issue committees such as Nashville Department of Transportation, Parks, Programs and Grants, and others. They commenced the process of prioritizing the ideas, utilizing a rubric system. The rubric system evaluated the need, feasibility, and equity of each idea based on research questioned designed by the Budget Delegates.
The proposal development process occurs in three stages. In the first stage, each Issue Committee selected three ideas for each Council District, amounting to a total of 12 ideas per District across 35 districts. You may find the ideas selected in the first stage here:
- North Regional Committee First Screening
- South Regional Committee First Screening
- West Regional Committee First Screening
- Southeast Regional Committee First Screening
The budget delegates were then assigned to regional committees based on the districts they represent. The regional committees, using the rubric system, identified the top five ideas per Council District. The selection of the top five ideas can be found here:
- North Regional Committee Second Screening
- South Regional Committee Second Screening
- West Regional Committee Second Screening
- Southeast Regional Committee Second Screening
Next, each Budget Delegate was responsible for composing a proposal summary of a chosen idea, which was then submitted to the relevant Metro departments for feedback regarding eligibility and budget considerations. This concludes the first stage review of ideas.
Out of the 170 summaries submitted, 77 were found to be unfeasible by the Metro departments. The summaries included metro department feedback can be found here:
The remaining proposals that were considered feasible underwent the Second Stage of review by the Budget Delegates. From the remaining proposals deemed eligible by the Metro departments, the regional committees were tasked with selecting up to 3 proposals per Council District. Of those proposals, the budget delegates revised the proposal summaries to incorporate the feedback from Metro Departments. These revisions were resubmitted to Metro Departments for feedback and the Second Stage Review was completed. You may find the selected proposals from the second stage review here:
In the third stage review, the regional committees selected only 1 proposal from the remaining proposals per council district.]. Then, each delegate was assigned a district to write an official proposal. The proposals were submitted to metro departments for final review. The delegates then presented their final proposals and adopted a list of 35 items to move forward. The proposals that were deemed unfeasible by Metro and/or were discarded by the committee can be found here:
Eliminated or Withdrawn Proposals
2023 Budget Delegates:
- Shun Ahmed
- Maria Asad
- Adam Bahadursingh
- Carter Barnett
- Teresa Burse
- Max Butler
- Kaylin Campbell
- Ingrid Campbell
- Jill Chafetz
- Michael Crabtree
- Kerry Crawford
- Doraida deLeon
- D’Anelle Desire
- Kiescha Foster
- Dan Gartley
- Kelly Harkins
- Cara Harris
- Ariana Hodes
- Zachary Jenkins
- Gregory Jones
- Kristine LaLonde
- Brad McAlister
- Belinda McLin
- John D. Richardson
- Carey Rogers
- Mark Schlicher
- Robert Stanley
- Robert Taylor
- Matt Thackston
- Nicole Valentine
