The People’s Budget: What’s Got Your Vote?

VPM | By Rich Meagher

Published April 9, 2025 at 8:46 PM EDT

It’s time to decide the People’s Budget of Richmond!

Richmond’s government has set aside $3M of YOUR money – and now YOU get to decide what to do with it. This participatory budget program has reached the voting stage, and now anyone who lives, works, or goes to school in the city — age 14 and up! — can vote on projects in their council district.

Rich sits down with City Council staffer Leidiana Delgado to find out how the process got this far. Then he talks to two “budget delegates” – regular folks who volunteered to review all the ideas so that the whole city could vote on the best ones possible.

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Rich Meagher

Richard J. Meagher [pronounced MARR] is Professor of Political Science, Director of Social Entrepreneurship at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia, and the host of RVA's Got Issues.

Meagher is an expert observer of local and state politics in Richmond and has been featured everywhere from print to television to radio. He is a political analyst for WRIC 8 News, and his commentary and opinion have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and his own RVAPolitics site.

He is also a Faculty Fellow for Brandeis University’s Educational Network for Active Civic Transformation (ENACT), a national program engaging undergraduates in state-level legislative change. Meagher's 2020 book, Local Politics Matters, argues for the importance of participation in city and county politics.

In 2023, he launched the Virginia Amendments Project, a resource for scholars and citizens about amendments to the Constitution of Virginia.

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