Bottcher Goes Secret Agent Mode To Unveil Participatory Budget Winners

City Council Member Erik Bottcher, who represents Chelsea and parts of Hell’s Kitchen, announced the results of this year’s participatory budgeting contest. The program allocates $1 million dollars in capital funding to NYC’s 59 City Council districts, which is used for democratic improvements to public spaces.

In Bottcher’s West Side district, residents championed three specific ideas, he said. The addition of air conditioning to the auditorium at P.S. 11, an elementary school on W. 21st St., came in first place. It earned 2,568 votes. A chairlift for P.S. 212 Midtown West, located at W. 48th St., took the second place slot with 2,152 votes. Adding a “media center” to W. 25th St.’s Chelsea Recreation Center earned third place, with 1,828 votes.

The total vote count came in at 5,136, which Bottcher called a “record” amount of participating constituents. Unlike other city, state and federal elections, the voting requirements for participatory budget projects are looser. Residents as young as 11 years-old are allowed to vote. The only requirement is that the person lives in–or has a special connection via work or school–to the district where the vote is being cast.

Bottcher unveiled the winners in his district with an amusing social media bit that portrayed him as a secret agent, giving the highly sensitive project of outlining the winners to some Highline Teens, who posed as his fellow spies. Shades obscured his face, and the Mission Impossible theme played.

“Good afternoon, Agent Keisha,” Bottcher told his principal (teenage) agent. “Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to announce the Participatory Budgeting Winners to the community.”

”As always, should you or any your fellow Highline Teens fail in this mission, our agency will disavow any knowledge of your actions,” he joked. Some deliberately cheesy editing work followed, to make it appear as if Keisha’s now-sensitive phone was “self-destructing” in a ball of fire.

Other spy movie references followed, such as the secretive passing of phones and leaving of notes. “What’s my jam?” one agent asked in a memorable scene, before moving on to spread the word to her fellow teens. “PB,” Keisha said, using a cryptic acronym for participatory budgeting. She was visibly laughing in another take.

As a couple of agents arrived in an elevator to announce the second place winner, they had to give the following entry “code,” or perhaps credo: “To make government more transparent and equitable.”

Needless to say, Keisha or her comrades didn’t fail in their informational mission, and elaborated on some of the winners in the meantime. The media center, for example, will “have a recording studio for teens to express themselves creatively in a safe space.” The chairlift would make P.S. 212’s “auditorium more accessible for everyone.”

The air-conditioning at P.S. 11 will “help keep students cool during the students and community members safe and cool during the hot summer months,” the teens said in unison.

Bottcher then reassumed his day-job role as a City Council Member, giving a final thank-you address to “everyone who took part in [2024’s] participatory budgeting.” These included the “budget delegates, all the volunteers, everyone who voted, and the Highline Teens, who were such a big part of what we did this year.”

“Participatory budgeting is the process through which you can have input directly into how your tax dollars are spent, and I’m so excited to bring back PB next year and for many years to come,” Bottcher said.