The City of Monterey is changing the way its annual budget is developed, so programs are transparent and linked to results, and citizens help set priorities. The process is called Priority-based Budgeting and it recasts the budget into programs instead of line items. Citizens are asked to define broad goals, such as quality of life, and then prioritize how they want their tax dollars spent to achieve those goals.
Public meetings will be held in October and November to gather citizen input. The first public meeting will be held on Wednesday, October 6 from 7:00 – 9:30 p.m. at the Monterey Conference Center. At that session, citizens will be briefed about the priority based budgeting process and will help refine the goals articulated by the City Council as a series of Value Drivers. A second round of public meetings will be held the week of November 8 – 12. At those sessions, citizens will be given an imaginary $500 to spend on the goals they believe are most important.
