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Photo by Tom Callan

Gallery owner Esther Nash says that the city should give her money so she can upgrade her Second Street art space under a new program pushed by four councilmembers to let the people decide how the city allocates taxpayer funds.

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More than 100 people packed a Park Slope church last week to pitch ideas for future construction projects in their district in the first round of an “American Idol”-style contest for control over $1 million in taxpayer funds.

Councilman Brad Lander (D–Park Slope) will hand out the capital money after a series of forums where his constituents determine how to spend the money in a grassroots experiment known as “participatory budgeting.”

Councilman Jumaane Williams (D–Flatbush) and two other lawmakers who signed on to the initiative are holding similar conventions in the next few weeks to dispense with the remaining $3 to $5 million.

Residents who crowded into the Old First Reformed Church on Seventh Avenue on Oct. 5 were rife with suggestions of how to spend their cash — money that Lander was elected to figure out, though he wants to invite the public back into the mist-shrouded process.

The ideas came fast and furious.

Fran York suggested building a physical soapbox in Prospect Park where Brooklynites could practice democracy on a regular basis.

“I want something permanent that would provide a spot where people could have their voices heard,” she said. “They have one in Hyde Park in London. Why not here?”

Esther Nash, who owns the decrepit building at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Second Street, wants the city to give her money to renovate the building into an art gallery.

This being Park Slope, several others recommended — you guessed it — more bike lanes, a proposal that’s sure to enrage opponents of the Prospect Park West bike lane who remain locked in a legal battle to remove the world’s most controversial cycle path.

Bikers want the lanes installed on Seventh, Fifth and Third avenues.

Residents also said they wanted more public benches and garbage cans along Seventh and Fifth avenues, an improved traffic circle at Bartel-Pritchard Square and new community gardens throughout the district, which stretches from Carroll Gardens to Kensington.

Lander has limited the proposals to new construction projects or repairs to existing infrastructure, and cost between $35,000 and $1 million, the total amount that Lander has promised to give away.

For cost comparison, consider that it cost $50,000 to repair PS 29’s playground after vandals torched it.

The meeting last week was the first in a lengthy process that will generate hundreds of ideas — too many to make it onto a final ballot. So starting in November, a committee of supposedly objective volunteer delegates — which is open to anyone who attends the nominating conventions, organizers say — will narrow the list down to the most-popular options.

The “short list” will be put to a district-wide vote in March.

It is possible that one project could win, but Lander said it’s more likely that several smaller proposals would get funded.

“There would be something attractive about choosing a lot of smaller projects,” Lander said, because they would potentially impact a larger number of people across the entire district.

Supporters said the process will bring more transparency to government — and pointed out that the approach has already been adopted in Chicago, Toronto and other cities around the world.

Still, some worried that special interest groups in the form of well-connected civic groups and activists would use their ties to elected officials and organizing experience to win most of the money.

“If the people in my neighborhood don’t get more involved, all the usual players will get what they want,” said Eman Rashid, an unemployed teacher who lives in Gowanus with her 9-year-old daughter, and wants more bus shelters near her home. “There are basic needs that should” be prioritized.

©2011 Community Newspaper Group