Putting the fun into public funding

Swallows, hedgehogs, seniors, children and bare feet get a share of tax spending in Rennes' budget participatif

The swallows will once again return to Rennes. Hedgehogs will safely scurry across town. Hikers will trod along a “barefoot sensory trail” in one of the city’s largest parks. And a cafe just for kids will open, giving them a place where they can play, learn art, meet new friends and presumably bring along their parents for some freshly brewed espresso.

It’s all thanks to our town’s quirky budget participatif, a biennial event in which residents vote on how they’d like a portion of their taxes spent. This year a total of 3.5 million euros (almost $3.8 million) was up for grabs. We selected from a peculiar variety of 100 projects; fifty of them were chosen in an online poll and will be funded over the coming years.

Normally, municipal budgets are a painfully boring but necessary part of civic life. I can’t tell you how many budget hearings I attended as a newspaper reporter, dozing off under the glare of buzzing fluorescent lights as I listened to elected officials drone on about trash collection and street-paving. The process seems designed to bore you to tears, until you give up and just let the bureaucrats spend your tax dollars on their own pet projects.

I imagine the same tedium goes on here with discussions about the bulk of the city’s annual €460 million budget. The budget participatif, however, puts the fun into at least a portion of its funding.

In the months before the voting this spring, posters sprung up across town, at bus shelters and billboards. J’ai une idée pour Rennes — I have an idea for Rennes. Anyone can make a proposal, no matter how whacked-out. You submit a description, funding requirements and goals and any other information you’d need to sway your fellow citizens. A city committee decides if the project is feasible and then lets the locals decide during two weeks of online voting.

It’s all organized under the Rennes Charter for Local Democracy, created by our municipal council in 2015. The idea is to give residents more say in how their government operates.

It’s not a particularly unique idea. Scores of French towns conduct similar votes, and it’s even caught on in America. My hometown of Philadelphia, for example, provides opportunities for residents to suggest funding ideas. Unfortunately, it can be an intimidating process, one that requires them to make their three-minute pitches in person in front of City Council. (Lately, Philly’s Mural Arts Program launched the People’s Budget with a pop-up office at Love Park to collect funding ideas, with some success.)

In American, though, citizen proposals are aimed mainly at prosaic issues, like public safety, mental health and education — all worthy and vital, yet programs that, in France, would be carried out routinely within the city’s general budget, not as a to-do list for stressed-out neighborhoods.

By comparison, Rennes’ participatory budget is one of whimsy, like a wishlist from the mind of Pee Wee Herman.

For example, those hedgehogs.

Apparently the cute, little buggers travel up to four kilometers a night, to scavenge for food and reproduce. The problem is they often encounter walls and fences, making sojourns around town impossible. The solution: La Route à Hérisson, a series of hedgehog passages that allows them to crawl through fence and wall openings, from yard to yard.

The proposal got nearly 900 votes, enough to earn it €10,000 in funding.

If past experience is any indication (there are hedgehog passages in Caen and in several British towns), they’ll get the school kids involved, and maybe webcams to share videos of the cute critters. Fun for everyone!

Hedgehog passages are installed with the approval of property owners.

Public funding for hedgehogs is just one of the many wild ideas that brings character to a community and makes my French town such a pleasant place. Among the other winning projects:

• A large painted sidewalk maze, to be installed in one of the city’s large plazas (€10,000 in funding).

• A kiosk made from raw earth (clay and sand) to serve as a community shelter (€100,000).

• A park trail for walking barefoot over a variety of textures (€15,000).

• Chauffeured tricycle rides for seniors (€13,000).

• A cafe just for children, with games and workshops (€10,000).

• Artificial nests and towering platforms to attract swallows back to town, to herald spring and promote biodiversity (€30,000).

• Preservation of the city’s last remaining Michelin direction sign, installed by the tire company to promote driving around France (€10,000).

Michelin direction signs were installed around France after World War I, to promote driving (and, incidentally, tire usage.)

Yet more euros will be spent on bicycle racks, park benches, a little free library to be installed in a red English telephone box, a bird observatory, and a grazing area for sheep in a city park.

To the American mindset, projects like these no doubt seem like a completely ridiculous waste of tax dollars. But the budget participatif is about more than just the projects themselves. The entire process gives residents a stake in the government —their government. That’s something that’s been missing in America ever since Reagan declared “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” The negativity has only worsened as Trump and Musk claim, in their vile effort to dismantle it, that the government is rife with fraud. Their self-serving lies are aimed at making us forget that a well-functioning government is key evidence of a civilized society. Our government can improve our towns, can make us better people.

OK, I’ll get off my soapbox. But, really, can you put a dollar sign on hedgehog infrastructure?