Chesapeake, Virginia Begins Prioritization - "This is a More Disciplined and Analytical Approach"

Chesapeake, Virginia Begins Prioritization - "This is a More Disciplined and Analytical Approach"

With budgets getting tighter across the country, more cities are turning to Prioritzation.


"I just feel like we need to begin to put proactive steps in place so we can prepare the organization for what is ahead," said William Harrell, City Manager. "Sure, we can just start eliminating things. But then is that what the citizens are saying? Is that what council is saying to us? This is a more disciplined and analytical approach."

"It sounds intuitive but what we found was there was no real methodology to connect all of the things that government does" to what policymakers want to see for their cities.


CHESAPEAKE

Acknowledging that yet another round of budget cuts could be necessary - and almost out of relatively easy ways to do it - the city has hired a pair of consultants to help figure out where the next cuts will come from.

"I just see down the road the need to further reduce the city's overall spending and... you need other strategies to go further in an effort that doesn't erode the core services," City Manager William Harrell said. After two years of budget cuts, "it gets to a point where all the low-hanging fruit is gone."

For the fee, the pair will provide their services in helping the City Council decide on priorities and weighing city programs based on how much they contribute to those priorities. Those programs that rank toward the bottom could face elimination.

"It sounds intuitive," Fabian said. But, he said, "what we found was there was no real methodology to connect all of the things that government does" to what policymakers want to see for their cities.

Fabian and Johnson, who worked in city government in Colorado, say they've worked with 16 cities, ranging from San Jose, Calif., to Boulder, Colo., and Lakeland, Fla.

With budgets getting tighter across the country, more cities are turning to services like theirs to help them prioritize, they said.
"I just feel like we need to begin to put proactive steps in place so we can prepare the organization for what is ahead," Harrell said. "Sure, we can just start eliminating things. But then is that what the citizens are saying? Is that what council is saying to us? This is a more disciplined and analytical approach."

At a planning meeting this week, council members took the first step of writing down what they thought should be priorities for the city.

Safe communities, economic vitality and a clean environment jumped out as priorities several council members shared, among other things.

They even set up an e-mail address so that members of the public could contribute ideas on what should be priorities - input@cityofchesa peake.net.

Harrell called the hire an investment.

"When you have a budget of over $800 million and you indicate $50,000 as an investment in your future it would be very short-sighted to be critical of that," he said.

Chesapeake eliminated positions this year and was the only South Hampton Roads city to lay off general wage workers last year during its budgeting rounds.

Alicia Wittmeyer, (757) 222-5216, alicia.wittmeyer@pilotonline.com