CLEVELAND — The local grassroots organization People's Budget Cleveland submitted 10,582 signatures to the clerk of Cleveland city council on July 10, hoping to get its People's Budget charter amendment on the November ballot.
The initiative, if passed by voters, would allow Cleveland residents to vote on how the equivalent of 2% of Cleveland's budget is spent to support neighborhood and capital projects.
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Evan O’Reilly with People’s Budget Clevelandtold News 5 the signatures were collected in six weeks, with 5,907 of them needing to be validated by the clerk of the city council by July 20. O'Reilly said the steering committee, made up of 10 Cleveland residents, would take input from residents throughout the city on how the funding should be used.
“Anybody in the city can come up with an idea for their neighborhood or for the entire city, we’ll have a steering committee of residents to take those ideas and put them into proposals with earmarks attached, and then we would hold a ranked choice vote to decide what gets part of the funding," O'Reilly said. “Right now, a lot of the focus on development in Cleveland is trying to attract people who don’t live here to come in and spend their money here instead of trying to make this a beautiful, safe growing community.”
Molly Martin with People’s Budget Cleveland told News 5 the ballot initiative would get more Cleveland residents involved in the political and budgetary process.
“Two of three Cleveland residents don’t vote, and we think that we need to be creating new tools to get people involved and allowing them to make decisions that impact their lives," Martin said. “Why do we spend all this money to subsidize stadiums when we don’t see any improvement in the community? The safest communities are the ones with the most resources.”
Martin said she believes similar people's budgets have been successful in other U.S. cities like Seattle, Los Angels, Grand Rapids, and New York City, with Boston recently passing a law.
However, Cleveland Council President Blaine Griffin and 12 of the 16 other city council members don't agree a people's budget is a good way to administrate some $14 million in tax dollars. Griffin believes it would cause budget cuts for other badly needed projects like hiring more Cleveland police officers.
“I’m very concerned with this idea; I’m going to have to urge the public to vote no on this," Griffin said. “This could be 120 police officers that we could fund; this is more money than we have budgeted for the entire city for street repair; this could possibly mean that we could have to lay off workers and reduce some city services.”
Griffin said he's also concerned the People's Budget citizens steering committee may lack crucial accountability when administrating millions of dollars.
“This has the potential to eliminate transparency; it has a lot of potential to be corrupt," Griffin said. "This is an inexperienced, unaccountable, not elected body that they would create as a steering committee. Nobody is talking about if these guys have to turn in ethics reports; there are so many things that are flawed with this."
Still homeless community activist "Loh," who is also a People's Budget Cleveland member, told News 5 a people's budget is needed to give everyone a voice in the decision-making process as to how some tax dollars are used.
“In our community, lots of people, they know their voices have never been heard, so these community needs have never been heard," Loh said. “Your tax money should work for you, so you should have a say for it.”
