The City of Somerville completed the first-ever Participatory Budgeting cycle in 2023. In Participatory Budgeting, residents submit ideas for how to improve Somerville with one million dollars; volunteers score and select the 20 best ideas; and residents vote on the final ideas.
This dataset describes the demographic characteristics of residents who submitted ideas. Residents could submit ideas through the Participatory Budgeting website. Submitters could optionally provide demographic information about themselves. Some submitters chose to identify themselves by name, while others remained anonymous. Demographic information is provided here in aggregated form, intentionally without a link to the individual ideas, to preserve privacy and anonymity.