The process was initiated by Mayor Menino, announced in 2013 and championed by Mayor Walsh, whose foreword promises a real process with real money and real decisions. The instrument is a $1 million line in the annual capital budget, so Formal is a reading: it is documented and renewed each year, but no ordinance or charter provision is mentioned in any source and the authority must be re-appropriated every fiscal year. The rulebook says winning projects are submitted to the Office of the Mayor for final approval and inclusion in the City budget, which is a procedural gate rather than a documented veto; no source records a result being overridden, all seven 2014 winners were funded, and by 2016 several projects had been implemented, so Binding is the honest read with that gate noted. Discretion is full within the pot, but capital eligibility and City cost estimates filter what reaches the ballot, and City departments sometimes steered ideas out of the process toward other channels.