Richmond residents fill out cards to give their suggestions for capital improvement projects at the formal launch of the Richmond People's Budget on Sep 10, 2024. (Charlotte Rene Woods\Virginia Mercury)

On Tuesday, the city of Richmond presented a $3 million check to its residents to spend how they want -- both metaphorically and literally.

A crowd of about 50 gathered in Abner Clay Park in the afternoon for the formal kickoff of a public-input process on how to spend the earmarked amount on improvement projects in neighborhoods around the city.

"What it does is allow you to bring together your community, your neighbors, your friends, (and) your coworkers to identify things you want to see improved right here where you live, work and play," 1st District councilor Andreas Addison said. "(City councilors) make decisions every year about how we spend the whole budget -- let's put some money in your hands."

Addison first led the charge on council to pass an ordinance to create Richmond's participatory budget process, called the Richmond People's Budget.

The goal is to learn from residents what they would most like to see the city fix or construct. Between pop up events and an online portal at www.rvapb.org, residents around Richmond can submit their ideas until November. There are already a range of proposals: sidewalk and road improvements like pothole filling; installing speed bumps to calm traffic; building bus shelters and park gazebos; and creating community fridges or community gardens. Some of these suggestions come from residents of the city's 9th district, which, since the People's Budget soft-launched earlier this summer, has submitted the most ideas of all the districts.

9th District Councilor Nicole Jones was excited at Tuesday's formal launch and shared the news of her district's input.

"We gotta keep this energy going though," she said. "We've got to keep it going. So continue to submit forms. So come out to one of the in-person locations."

By March 2025, residents will be able to vote online and at pop up events on district-specific and city-wide ballots. The next phase of the process should begin by July 2025, as winning proposals become eligible for funding.

Matthew Slaats, a city official helping to oversee the process, considers this first year as fielding and finalizing the projects before seeing efforts on their implementation next year.

Of the $3 million allocated, each district will get $200,000 towards projects with the remaining funding to be a supplemental amount for districts that have historically been underinvested in -- such as Richmond's 8th, 9th, 6th, 7th and 3rd districts.

Slaats said there will be further conversations among the commission from there to ensure money is going deeper into the portions of those districts that need it most. He pointed to Richmond's 6th district for example, as it includes some of Richmond's high-earning households along with some of its lowest-income households.

For Jones' district, the 9th, she said that some of her constituents' submissions so far have included creating a "Welcome to the South Side" sign. Several districts south of the James River have been historically Black and subject to redlining and underinvestment.

When mapping Richmond in the 1930s for part of a Depression-era program to revive the nation's housing market, appraisers lined Black-populated neighborhoods in red and labeled them "hazardous" for home loans. The effects linger today, as many of these areas have had less public infrastructure and investment. Allocating more of the People's Budget to parts of these districts is a chance to infuse equity into modern-day capital improvement projects, several speakers at Tuesday's launch noted.

While the Richmond People's Budget is a first-of-its-kind in Virginia, it's a process that originated in Brazil and has been adopted by thousands of local governments, school boards and other entities since the late 1980s. Charlottesville city council considered implementing the process a few years ago before reversing course.

Closer to Virginia, Slaats said cities like Durham and Greensboro in North Carolina have implemented participatory budget processes several years in a row, with projects ranging from improvements to public parks and recreational centers to safety enhancements at public housing complexes and funding social programs.

For now, Richmond's pilot is focused on capital improvement projects.

Slaats said to think of it as "we're not funding an after-school swimming program, but we are fixing the pool."

He and Addison noted the potential for the concept to grow. Slaats said that he and the committee have been in talks with members of Virginia's General Assembly and other localities in Virginia with the hopes to see it "spread around Virginia."