City ends “budget participatif”
After three editions of the “budget participatif” in which city residents could choose priorities or make suggestions how a small part of the budget could be spent, city hall is shutting it down.
Est Montréal quotes the response from the city: “Dans un contexte de rigueur budgétaire marqué par la nécessité d’abolir 1 000 postes pour équilibrer le budget municipal, la Ville doit faire des choix difficiles.” Is the city really driven to abolish 1000 positions to save money, or is SMF’s administration doing this as a performative gesture to demonstrate she wants to save money? And what other cuts is this excuse going to be brought out to justify?
(And, to prolong a relevant point raised here and elsewhere: when will they cut the ridiculously huge police item to help balance the budget?)
Nicholas 16:04 on 2026-02-22 Permalink
As someone who has spent many, many hours at public meetings and involved in the public process, the people who respond to these things (including me) are not representative of the general population. Even with that, I did the last one and it took a long time to understand the projects at even a base level, and I don’t know which communities are more in need. I would much prefer we choose people by a (relatively) higher turnout method who can work full time jobs deciding which projects to fund. And if there’s something people want we can reach out to those selected representatives and ask they support projects we like.
Kate 16:15 on 2026-02-22 Permalink
I did go through at least one of them, Nicholas, and although I didn’t dig deeply into the relative merits of the projects, it gave me a – possibly factitious – sensation of being able to add my two cents. Maybe one cent.
Was your feeling that it was an exercise intended to make people feel involved, without any real impact on decisions being made?
Nicholas 19:21 on 2026-02-22 Permalink
No, I think it’s a real process that does allocate money, just a bad one. I just think that we elect people to make decisions for us and then judge if they did a good job or not at regular intervals. They’re being paid like $100,000 a year to make our city better; why should a bunch of busybodies like myself get more say, especially when even I don’t nearly have the time that people who are paid to do so do?
There were 28,500 people who voted (anyone who has an email, so could literally be anyone in the world, certainly some non-residents voted). If those were all resident adults that’s 2.5% of registered voters. Turnout at the election was 37% (421,000). So it’s an incredibly small group that responds. People submitted 880 ideas, and only 8% were realistic and 4% selected to go to a citizen vote. It is good for people to submit good ideas, and staff to filter out the silly ones. But then just go one step further and get the politicians to choose what to fund.
I was asked to rank local projects in boroughs I rarely if ever visit. And then the people there will be angry a bunch of people in other borough killed their local park upgrade. Who do they complain to? No one! There’s no accountability. “They could have voted too.” Why are we putting all this cognitive load on busy people, knowing 97% won’t respond? Do your job, and if you do it badly we’ll throw you out.
Ian 23:06 on 2026-02-23 Permalink
I engaged in them just to see what the projects on the table were, and put my support behind the ones that seemed the most relevant in my neighbourhood. As surveys they were very pre-loaded and guiding, so I don’t know what value there migh tbe quantitatively or qualitatively …