Just before Thanksgiving, Seattle City Hall wrapped up its $7.1 billion 2022 spending plan. Along the way, officials touted increased spending on the city’s three major crises: affordable housing, homelessness and addiction, and COVID-19 recovery. But plenty of community priorities were left behind.

The City of Seattle is now looking for help shaping the next step in trying to make sure more of those priorities make the final plan. This week, the formal “request for proposals” went out for “organizations and coalitions to provide administrative and consulting services” to assist in planning a new “participatory budgeting” process in Seattle that will begin with a $28 million funding package.

CHS reported in June on the Seattle City Council’s actions to move forward with a participatory budgeting plan in the city’s Office of Civil Rights. The vote moved forward a $30 million package hoped to address inequity by creating a system of more direct control of community spending in Seattle. CHS reported here on the plan and the Black Brilliance Research Project born out of last year’s Black Lives Matter protests in Seattle.

“After the protests following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, calls to acknowledge the systematic harm done to Black communities resulted in numerous proposals coming from BIPOC organizations on how to invest in community safety through funding for housing, education, and healthcare directly back into the community instead of policing,” the city’s statement on the opening of the application process for helping to administrate the planning process. “This participatory budgeting process is one result of this community organizing and activism and will be one of the largest participatory budgeting undertakings in the nation.”

The Office of Civil Rights will select one proposal for funding. After proposals are submitted, a rating panel comprised of community members and city staff will “review, rate, and make final selection recommendations based on the evaluation criteria.”

The request includes a set of priority criteria for interested organizations:

• Demonstrated capacity and experience to conduct a citywide PB Program with actionable recommendations for the City to make decisions resulting in community investments.
• A strong connection to communities historically and currently impacted by police violence, including the Black community.
• Sustained commitment to work with and for historically and currently marginalized communities, and in collaboration with local organizations/coalitions led by Black, Indigenous, and communities of color in building power and local capacity for this citywide PB Program; uplifting BIPOC queer and transgender leadership to build solidarity.
• A commitment to address internalized oppression, affirming all identities, and values ending all forms of oppression, which include racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny.

SOCR director Mariko Lockhart will make the final award decision based on recommendations by the review panel.

The full Request for Proposal can be found here.

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