By the people, for the people: Kennett Decides initiative to develop residents’ ideas

From the time Mike Bontrager founded Square Roots Collective in 2021, the organization has served as an incubator of placemaking – a Johnny Appleseed-like initiative that has planted the collaborative seeds of community-based projects throughout Kennett Square and beyond.

The Creamery. Voices Underground. The Birch Street Project. The Kennett Trails Alliance. The Artelo Hotel.

Recently, Square Roots Collective (SRC), together with community partners Chatham Financial, Casa Guanajuato, Kennett Collaborative, and Kennett Borough, introduced a new concept – Kennett Decides – that places future community investment directly into the hands of area residents who live in the community, giving everyone an opportunity to propose and vote on projects that improve their towns and neighborhoods. To help them with the project, SRC is working with Civic Trust, a nationwide participatory budgeting company founded in 2019 by Matt Harder that provides technology infrastructure, communications, and process methodology to help residents participate in their governments’ budgeting process. To date, the organization has already helped develop community projects in Denver and Atlanta. Matt’s experience began when he managed New York City’s participatory budgeting program.

“I asked Matt if he could imagine doing something like this for a small town like Kennett Square, and he said that this concept would work well here, for the same reason it works well in a big city,” said SRC Chief of Staff Luke Zubrod. “One of my delights in this project is that our small town gets to do something that is typically only available in big cities.”

“This is an opportunity to raise up the voices of community members and get them involved. Not a lot of people have the time to attend a borough council meeting and make their voice known, but anyone can go on a website and say, ‘I have an idea.’”

Read more at the Chester County Press.