It's the Brian Lairn Show on WNYC. I'm Tiffany Hanson, filling in for Brian today. Well, there is a lot of budget talk these days. The New York State budget was finalized, finally. The New York City

budget is due at the end of the month, as is New Jersey's state budget, and governors, mayors,

legislators, all hashing this out. Did you know that you have a say in how some of the city

money gets spent? Voting is open now for deciding how to spend, quote, the people's money. It's part of a citywide participatory budgeting process that's been going on since last fall, but now is the time to cast your ballot. This process comes from the New York City Civic Engagement Commission, or the

CEC. We're joined now by Sara Saeed, the chair and executive director of the CEC, and

Yasmani. See, Yasmani? I had it right when we were off air, and here I am now, messing it up.

Yasmani Arbaleda. That's right. I did it I did it okay yesmani Arbolaida who is an

artist educator community organizer who is the CEC's designated people's

artist welcome to both of you thank you thank you so much yeah thank you to be here

thank you all right so Sara I just want to talk about this process of participatory budgeting because I think it's

confusing to some people. So if you can just help us delineate a little bit about, there's the

overall budgeting process that most of us have no involvement. There is a part of the budgeting process

that is a participatory budgeting. This is even separate from that.

So can you just lay out a little bit how these are all differentiated from each other?

Sure. I just want to first begin by thanking you for having us on the show to talk about a less told

story, which is about participatory budgeting. Absolutely. And also want to just acknowledge that the listeners of this show are probably super

civically engaged anyway.

And as we are listening and you are listening to this show, I encourage you to think about

the people in your network and the family members that you have and the friends that you

have, the neighbors that you have, the neighbors that you have,

because to support civic engagement relationships are really important.

And so I want you to be thinking about how you can share this story with the community.

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