Frequently Asked Questions
Want to learn more about Your 2 Cents Portland? Here are some of the questions we get asked the most.
1. What is Your 2 Cents Portland?
2. Will this raise my taxes?
3. Why the Your 2 Cents Portland Campaign?
4. What is "Participatory Budgeting"?
- A representative steering committee crafts transparent process rules.
- Residents brainstorm ideas in civic assemblies or online
- Community representatives and government staff craft the ideas into feasible projects
- Residents select winning projects through a binding vote
- Government implements the winning projects and the process repeats
5. What is the track record of participatory budgeting in other cities like Portland?
6. Where did Your 2 Cents Portland come from? How did we get here?
7. What Happens if We Vote to Pass “Your 2 Cents"?
- Residents may propose both citywide and district-level (neighborhood) projects.
- The City Auditor will regularly audit the program.
- An Oversight Committee, with members from every City Council district, provides guidance, ensures transparency, and supports evaluation and improvement of the process.
- The PB process must be open and accessible to all residents.
- The proposing process includes distinct stages: idea collection, project development with input from residents and city staff, and a binding community vote to select winning projects.
- Must be compliant with Oregon Local Budget Law.
8. What happens if we don't pass Your 2 Cents?
9. Can we afford to do this?
10. How do I get involved, support Your 2 Cents Portland, and bring this proven program to our city?
Your 2 Cents PDX is a community-based campaign by and for Portlanders, to bring budgeting power into the hands of all Portlanders. Parks? Trash clean up? Public Safety? Housing? Jobs programs? Crosswalks? Childcare?…You decide! We believe all residents can and should have a greater direct voice and vote (our two cents!) in how public funds are spent for our communities. By joining over 7,000 other cities and municipalities worldwide using participatory budgeting, we can improve our communities, increase government transparency and accountability, and build community in a time of intense division. Ours is a multiracial, city-wide movement, advancing a vision of a better Portland where every voice counts and every vote matters.
No. If a majority of Portlanders vote for Your 2 Cents, the charter amendment would not raise any taxes. This measure allocates 2% of funds from the existing budget. This includes existing revenue from property tax, business license taxes, lodging taxes, and other existing taxes and fees, such as Portland Clean Energy Fund.
Because we all deserve a voice and a vote on how our city spends our money. City Hall works best when everyone’s voice is heard. But powerful interests and their lobbyists can drown out the public good. That’s why every Portlander should have a direct voice and vote on how the City spends public money on our behalf. Your 2 Cents Portland would give all residents a direct say in how to spend 2% of the city budget. It would finally bring participatory budgeting (PB) to Portland (the last major west coast city not to have it!). This means you and your neighbors can help shape how Portland spends public money to make our neighborhoods stronger and our city better. We all deserve a voice and a vote on our city’s budget and 2 Cents PDX would deliver on that promise. Your 2 Cents Portland (Y2CP) is an initiative petition and prospective ballot measure for the November 2026 election that brings participatory budgeting to Portland via voter-approved charter amendment.
Participatory budgeting (PB) allows residents of a municipality to directly decide how to spend a portion of a public budget. Practiced in well over 7,000 municipalities worldwide, PB implementation can vary, but usually involves five basic steps:
PB is one of the fastest growing and widely researched forms of participatory democracy. Watch this introductory video or visit Participatory Budgeting Oregon to learn more about how the process works.
Solid. Participatory budgeting (PB) is a proven way to tap the lived-experience of residents, make city government work better, and bring people together to solve our most pressing challenges and improve communities.
PB began in Brazil in 1989 and spread rapidly across the globe. More than 7,000 municipalities on five continents and over 100 cities in the United States have already implemented participatory budgeting programs. In places like Chicago, St. Louis, and Seattle, residents routinely decide how to spend part of their city’s budget.
Residents have more voice and more choice. PB can improve neighborhoods and deepen community ties while making the government more responsive and trustworthy.
In New York City, PB started in 2011 and today over hundred thousand New Yorkers allocate tens of millions of dollars annually to community driven projects.
Here in Oregon, PB has been piloted in the Portland Metro area with promising results. Metro is implementing a process with parks and natural area funding and young people in East Portland completed their own pilot 2024 using federal funds.
It is time to bring Citywide PB to Portland. All residents should have a direct say in public investments to enhance public safety, provide housing and homelessness services, build neighborhood parks or any feasible City project or program that will improve livability for our community.
Since getting off the ground in Chicago in 2009, participatory budgeting has been spreading across the United States. Major West coast cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Tacoma, Seattle, and Vancouver and Victoria BC, have all implemented municipal participatory budgeting processes in the last decade. However, Portland remains the only major city on the West Coast yet to do the same.
And not because Portlanders haven’t been asking for it! Proposals to bring PB to Portland have been circulating since 2011 but the City Council has yet to act. Meanwhile, New Yorkers voted overwhelmingly in 2018 to put PB in their city charter. Boston voters followed suit in 2021.
After years of community advocacy, Portlanders took participatory budgeting to the 2022 Portland Charter Commission and asked them to develop a charter amendment that could bring PB to Portland. The Charter Commission responded by crafting a PB amendment and sent it to the City Council in January 2023, but the City Council did not take action to send it to voters.
In response, Next Up Action Fund and Participatory Budgeting Oregon launched the Your 2 Cents Portland campaign to put the charter amendment on the November 2026 ballot via initiative petition.
If voters approve Your 2 Cents, Portland’s City Charter would be amended to require the City Council to establish, by ordinance, a participatory budgeting (PB) program through which all Portland residents can annually deliberate on and decide how to invest at least 2% of the City’s General Fund discretionary budget.
The charter amendment allows flexibility for City Council in creating the program but requires several core elements:
Funding for PB begins in Fiscal Year 2027–28, with the first full PB cycle to start by July 2028. Based on current forecasts, this represents approximately $16.4 million in FY 2027–28 and $17 million in FY 2028–29.
For full ballot language, visit the City of Portland Elections website.
More of the same! Residents get no say, and special interests dominate spending decisions at City Hall. Not great!
Can we afford not to? Some public officials may claim that the City can’t afford to give residents more voice and vote over (our two cents) of our city budget, while they control the entire budget (all 100 cents). But this isn’t about the amount of available money, it’s about how we spend it and who gets a say. Portlanders agree that they want a say in how public funds are spent on their behalf. We want Our Two Cents PDX!
You can sign up today here on our website to get involved! Hand out literature, collect petitions, put up a yard sign, donate, tell your friends! These are all ways you can help and we’d love to tell you how.