In 2014 Chicago was the site of the country’s first participatory budgeting (PB) process to allocate tax increment financing (TIF) funds. The community organization Blocks Together worked with residents and businesses in the neighborhood of West Humboldt Park to engage residents in a pilot PB process to directly decide how to spend $2 million in TIF funds for projects that might never have received funding through the usual channels. This process resulted in deep engagement of residents, and five community-developed projects will be implemented over the next few years.
As part of this historic process, Blocks Together, UIC’s Great Cities Institute and the Participatory Budgeting Project developed a tool kit that will provide information, resources, and lessons learned from using PB with TIF funds.
The final report, Democratizing Tax Increment Financing through Participatory Budgeting – A Tool Kit, is available here.