The City has added a new step to its biennial budget preparation process. The addition is the Budget Advisory Commission (BAC). The BAC was appointed by the City Council earlier this year. The purpose of the BAC is to bring business leaders in to take a deep look at our budget with the hope that we will gain advice and insight from them to improve what we’re doing and how we’re doing it.
City staff started the BAC off with a series of educational sessions to get them familiar with city government services. Last week, staff made its first set of presentations to the BAC on the 2008-2009 budget in two separate 4-hour sessions. The BAC received presentations from the Public Works Department and Fire Department, plus the Finance Division, Communications Division, IT Division, and Administration Division. Everyone else (Parks & Rec, Police, Community Development, Human Resources, etc.) are scheduled to make their budget presentations to the BAC next week in two more 4-hour sessions.
The purpose of the budget presentations is for the BAC to offer me their feedback, input and ideas for the 2008-2009 budget. Following the completion of the initial presentations (the last one is scheduled for July 12), I will consider all of the feedback, input and ideas offered to me by the BAC and then come up with the second version of the 2008-2009 budget. This budget version will be presented to the BAC on July 25. The BAC will consider my budget recommendation and then come back together on July 31 to offer me their final recommendations. I will use their final recommendations to base my final budget version that I will advance to the City Council on August 21.
The addition of the BAC to our budget process has added work load and time to the task for preparing the budget. But, so far, so good. The BAC has added value to our process already. The act of preparing budgets for presentation to an “outside” group of business leaders has caused City staff to be more precise with their numbers and more prepared with their rationales. There’s nothing wrong with that.
