The Central New York Community Foundation has named Cortland Area Chamber of Commerce the winner of a $75,000 participatory budgeting grant to support affordable child care access in Cortland County. The winning proposal was selected through a public vote held Thursday, August 20, as part of the Community Foundation’s participatory budgeting initiative celebrating its upcoming centennial.
Voting took place online throughout the day and in person during a live community celebration held at the Center for the Arts of Homer. A total of 1,093 votes were cast.
The winning grant will be used to help the chamber hire a project professional who will lead planning, feasibility, and fundraising to transform the former Parker Elementary School into an Early Childhood Education Center and community hub. The Center will initially serve about 100 children, with capacity to expand to 150.
“I want to thank the CNY Community Foundation for bringing this opportunity to Cortland County and for recognizing early childhood education as a critical need in our county,” said Bob Haight, president and CEO of the chamber. “We’re blessed to be able to accept this grant and kickoff this work. We look forward to partnering with many local organizations, including the City of Cortland and CAPCO, to make the dream a reality.”
Haight also remarked that the board of directors of both the Cortland Area Chamber of Commerce and the Cortland Area Chamber Foundation recognize that early childhood education is a top priority for the region and fully support the opening of the Parker School as an Early Education Center.
Thursday’s vote marked the culmination of a month-long community engagement process that invited Cortland County residents to help determine how funding should be invested locally. During two participatory budgeting sessions held earlier this month at Truxton Academy, residents worked to identify pressing community challenges and develop project ideas that would best support local needs. Participants identified increasing accessible, high-quality childcare throughout Cortland County.
“This process was designed to ensure that residents had a direct voice in shaping solutions for their community,” said Kate Downes, program manager at the Community Foundation. “Community members shared their experiences, identified what they believed was most needed and helped guide this investment from start to finish. That level of participation and collaboration is what makes participatory budgeting so meaningful.”
The ballot also included proposals submitted by Cortland Collective Impact Initiatives, Lime Hollow Nature Center and Cortland County Family YMCA. Participating nonprofit organizations worked closely with Community Foundation staff to refine their ideas and ensure proposals reflected community input gathered during the participatory budgeting sessions.
“The three organizations on the ballot are doing wonderful things for the children in our community, and we hope to partner with each of them,” said Haight.
The Cortland County initiative is the third of five participatory budgeting projects the Community Foundation will host across its service area as part of its two-year centennial celebration leading up to 2027. Collectively, the initiatives will distribute $500,000 in funding through projects selected directly by residents. Additional participatory budgeting initiatives are taking place in Oswego, Cortland, Cayuga and Onondaga counties.
Participatory budgeting is a community engagement process in which residents help decide how funding is allocated through a structured process of community need identification, prioritization and voting. In partnership with residents, nonprofits and grassroots organizations, participants identify priorities, co-design solutions and ultimately select the project they believe will best address a community need.
To learn more about the Community Foundation’s participatory budgeting initiative, visit cnycf.org/cortlandpb.
