For the May 3rd meeting of the Richmond Participatory Budgeting Steering Commission our primary focus was on how best to evaluate pb and then continue to dive into the conversation about how best to equitably allocate funds around the city.

We began with some brief updates.

The week before Matthew had presented to the City of Richmond Government Operations Committee (including council members Jordan, Lambert, and Lynch). He shared an overarching talk about how the RVAPB started, efforts with Phase 1, plans for Phase 2, and where the commission was settling on the design of the process. Commissioners were also reminded to complete a survey that Rhudy and Co had developed to finalize the communications plan. Finally, we shared that several new interviews are going to posted to the website sharing different voices about the impact pb can have on the City.

Next VCU Wilder School Faculty Brittany Keegan presented the evaluation planning research that she had completed. Seeing evaluation as a vital to creating a transparent and accountable process, she share recommendations for how best to define SMART goals for the process, think more deeply about stakeholders, and how to move forward with questions. The report shared best practices that have been developed over the last few years to document the impact of pb around the country.

After the presentation the commission shifted its attention to the rulebook and how best to allocate fund equitably around the city. Matthew presented some information about the social vulnerability index that RVAGreen 2050 is using. This is a national standard for showing communities that are highly impacted by environmental, health, and other factors. We also explored a brief map of CIP projects from 2023 and 2018 to get a sense of where those investments were going. There is an overall sense that these are being responsive to community needs, but they tend to be unseen or vague to residents. The role that RVAPB can then do is to make the more tangible and specific for the community.

For the next meeting we are going to continue to think through the process that the commission is designing by doing a table session. Each commission member is going to share 5 ideas (3 general and 2 for the under served), which we can then use to walk through our process.

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