It could cost Burnsville $300,000 to allow citizens to spend $100,000, and some council members are concerned

It turns out that allowing residents to have a say in how Burnsville should spend the money could be more costly than the city expected.

Burnsville staff revealed at a work session last week that an experiment that would allow residents to decide where some tax dollars go could cost two to three times as much as the $100,000 it would allow residents to spend. Still, the city’s “participatory budgeting” project — an innovative idea that has been tested primarily in larger U.S. cities like Boston and Oakland, California — will continue, with staff sharing more details in September.

The council decided to move forward with the project last September. Last week, a majority of council members supported allocating $100,000 in grants to the neighborhoods of up to $10,000 each.

“I absolutely know that (residents) have ideas that we’ve never thought of, or even considered,” said Cara Schulz, the council member who first championed the idea. “We just need to give our residents the opportunity … to have some control over their destiny.”

City staff estimated that administering the pilot program will require 2,500 to 3,500 hours of work — or $170,000 to $240,000 in the first year — at a time when the city’s staff is stretched thin and there is no budget to hire staff. Other costs, including outreach, would add $30,000 to $50,000, said Bethany Brewer, Burnsville’s director of strategic initiatives.

Council member Dan Kealey stressed that costs associated with staff hours did not require new money but would utilize existing salaried staff.

“Does it take up to a half million dollars a year to do this?” said Councilman Dan Gustafson. “We already have programs in place to reach our neighborhoods without having to create a new program.”

Gustafson said he will now vote “no” on the pilot project; Council member Vince Workman said that while he is not opposed to it, he is also concerned that costs are “going up.”

But Schulz said in an interview that he believes the program will be significantly smaller than what was presented at the work session and will require a fraction of the staff time discussed.

Staff had posed five questions to the council, including how to determine the neighborhood’s boundaries and who will provide guidance to staff to make that possible.

Most council members agreed that while some neighborhoods were obvious because they are governed by homeowners associations, residents should be able to define neighborhood boundaries for themselves and estimated there could be 70 or more.

Several council members leaned toward using money raised from the sale of city property or seeking outside money to fund the grants, rather than relying on funding from the city’s Economic Development Authority (EDA). EDA money can only go toward physical improvements, staff said.

Schulz suggested seeking grants from nonprofits: “Since this is something more innovative, the chance of getting a grant is actually higher,” she said.

Participatory budgeting has also been tested on a smaller or informal basis in Minnesota cities, including Minneapolis, Duluth, and Bloomington.