After six weeks of voting, Lexingtonians have picked four projects to implement in the Town’s first participatory budgeting cycle.

Residents chose to fund flashing lights at crosswalks and the bike path ($250,000), improvements to town conservation land ($100,000), benches and picnic tables in community open spaces ($70,000) and a dog park ($85,000). These expenditures are separate from Lexington’s operating and capital budgets.

The Select Board originally allocated $500,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funding to participatory budgeting. The top three projects amounted to a total of $420,000. Adding the fourth choice (the dog park) brought the total to $505,000, so the Select Board voted to authorize $5,000 more in ARPA funding to accommodate the fourth project.

About 1,650 community members cast votes to choose among 13 projects, which the Select Board picked from more than 130 original resident submissions. The four projects were selected using weighted totals, “which takes into account the ranking that everyone put on their project selections,” Lexington Communications Director Sean Dugan wrote in an email to LexObserver. About 96% of voters saw at least one of their choices win; 73% saw at least two of their choices win; and approximately 27% saw at least three of their choices win, he added.

“We’ll be working with the appropriate Town departments in the coming weeks and months to begin implementation of these projects,” Dugan wrote.

Leave a comment

All commenters must be registered and logged in with a verified email address. To register for an account visit the registration page for our site. If you already have an account, you can login here or by clicking "My Account" on the upper right hand corner of any page on the site, right above the search icon.

Commenters must use their real first and last name and a real email address.
We do not allow profanity, racism, or misinformation.
We expect civility and good-faith engagement.

We cannot always fact check every comment, verify every name, or debate the finer points of what constitutes civility. We reserve the right to remove any comment we deem inappropriate, and we ask for your patience and understanding if something slips through that may violate our terms.

We are open to a wide range of opinions and perspectives. Criticism and debate are fundamental to community – but so is respect and honesty. Thank you.