Park Slope

Where Do You Want Your Tax Dollars to Go? Let's Vote!

By Dave Hogarty Mar 23, 2012, 4:45pm EDT

Brooklyn residents with bright ideas have spoken, and now it's time for their fellow neighbors to vote to see which of these plans will come to fruition. It's the latest stage of Councilman Brad Lander's participatory budgeting project, which solicited Brooklynites for ideas on what improvements they wanted to see in their communities, had volunteers winnow the selections for eligibility, and are now having voters cast ballots to see how discretionary funds in their district should be spent [When/Where]. Last week there was a Participatory Budgeting Expo, where candidate projects that were deemed eligible filled the Park Slope Armory to make their pitch. Twenty of those projects presented at the Armory were selected to be on the ballot for a vote scheduled for next weekend (3/31-4/1). We've embedded some of the very brief project pitch videos after the jump, but you can see all of them at Councilman Lander's site. We are slightly bummed that our favorite project: Polite on Bikes kiosks, where volunteers would urger peaceful coexistence between cyclists and pedestrians, did not make the cut.

In a similarly themed project, Greenpoint residents are being asked for suggestions on how to spend a $19.5 million settlement from ExxonMobil for pollution of the Newtown Creek.