Last Friday the final report of the Black Brilliance Research Project was delivered to the Seattle City Council. As with the preliminary report delivered a few weeks ago (from which there are only a few substantive changes), it contains some interesting insights and has several shortcomings. It does, however, fill out more details in the project organizers’ recommendations for launching the next phase: a $30 million “participatory budgeting” program for the city.
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Black Brilliance Research Project effort fractures
Back in December SCC Insight reported on the dubious contractual structure underlying the Black Brilliance Research Project: how the Seattle City Council bent over backwards to avoid bidding out a $3 million contract and instead awarded it to King County Equity Now, using the nonprofit Freedom Project as a “fiscal agent”; the lack of detail in the contract as to how the money should be spent or what the deliverables would be; the challenges King County Equity Now would face in maintaining a rigorous standard for the research as it enrolled and trained hundreds of contributing researchers; and questions as …
Continue readingBlack Brilliance Research Project releases its preliminary report
(updates below re: rescheduling the second half of the presentation — it will now be on February 26 instead of next Monday) Over the weekend the City Council published the preliminary report of the Black Brilliance Research Project, a $3 million effort commissioned by the City Council and led by King County Equity Now. The contract calls for KCEN to do research in advance of a community-led “participatory budgeting” program to invest $30 million of public funds in creating community safety. The 1045-page report, originally submitted to the city on December 21, has spent a month being hammered into shape …
Continue readingCatching up with the Mayor’s task force and the Black Brilliance research project
As you may recall, over the past few months two parallel efforts were created to guide multi-million dollar investments in community safety: the Mayor’s Equitable Communities Initiative (ECI) task force to guide $30 million of investments; and King County Equity Now’s “Black Brilliance” research project, commissioned by the City Council, to identify priorities for community investments and make recommendations for a participatory budgeting process to allocate another $30 million of investments. There have been some recent developments, so it’s time to check in on both efforts. (I also encourage you to read PubliCola’s recent coverage of the Black Brilliance research …
Continue reading“Black Brilliance” research project delivers preliminary budget recommendations to City Council
Last week the Black Brilliance Research Project, the coalition group led by Decriminalize Seattle and King County Equity Now and asked by the City Council to spearhead a participatory budgeting process for city investments to increase community safety in BIPOC communities, delivered a preliminary report to the Council with a set of recommendations on priorities for the 2021 city budget.
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