“I like the idea,” said Raleigh Stout, 52. “The idea of bringing community people together and coming up with projects, then everybody getting a vote — I think it’s a good system and it also gets people more involved in improving the community and voting in general, gets them in that mode of thought.”

Greensboro is the first city in the South to embrace participatory budgeting. The process sets aside a portion of the city’s annual budget for residents to spend on the projects of their choosing.

Under the plan, in effect for the first time with this year’s budget, $500,000 has been set aside. Each of the city’s five districts will get to decide how to spend $100,000.

An 18-person steering committee took ideas from all over the city — anything from sidewalk improvements, crosswalks and bus shelters to larger, more imaginative plans to improve the community.

The committee gathered more than 600 project ideas, involving about 1,100 people in the process through community meetings. The best and most feasible of the ideas made the district ballots.

Public voting on the plans for each district started Monday and runs through April 22. Each district will have two voting events designated for their area, but people from any district can vote at any of the planned places and dates.

Wednesday’s District 3 event at downtown’s Central Library went smoothly, according to those who voted. Each voter was allowed to choose up to five projects, either through an online form or on paper. The projects with the largest number of votes will go forward. If several of the projects can be done for $100,000, multiple projects within the district will move forward.

“It was actually much better than most voting processes I’ve been through,” said Brandon Holliway, 21, an N.C. A&T student who voted Wednesday.

Holliway and Steven Wyrick, 22, both showed up to support their fellow Aggie and fraternity brother Hassan Black, who conceived of one of the projects.

Black’s idea is a citywide project to create a mobile application for city bus riders. It would use GPS to allow riders to use their phones to track their bus, its location and arrival time. Because it is a special, citywide project the plan — which would cost $18,000 — would need to win on all district ballots.

“I actually come from New York,” said Black, a technology management major at A&T. “So, when I moved here I just noticed that the buses are not that efficient. I think this would really help people, especially students who depend on the buses to get around.”

Participatory budgeting is already in place in cities like New York, Chicago and Vallejo, Calif. But it was a hard sell in Greensboro. The City Council approved the plan in a close 5-4 vote in October 2014. Since then, council members have butted heads with organizers over specifics of how the process would work, who could vote and how the projects would be chosen.

Now that the vote is underway, voters say they’re already looking forward to next year.

“I’ve got some project ideas for the next time they do it,” said Stout. “So seeing some of how the ones this year were laid out, that helped. I’m looking forward to putting some of my own out there next year.”