Thursday, January 12, 2012

Walnut Creek Reflects on Experience in Priority Based Budgeting



Hear Walnut Creek's Lorie Tinfow in Cal-ICMA's presentation of "Budget Strategies Amidst California's Continuing Fiscal Crisis." Walnut Creek's work is truly inspiring, and they are headed into their 3rd year of Priority Based Budgeting.

With rapidly declining revenues starting in 2008, Lorie led the City’s efforts to keep the budget in balance.  Building on Walnut Creek’s history and culture of reaching out to the community and engaging city staff, she crafted an outreach approach that included a program prioritization process from the value-based Fiscal Health and Wellness Program promoted by ICMA, and created by the Center for Priority Based Budgeting.

To help set financial priorities, the approach included goal-setting by the City Council, defining and weighting the goals by the community, and then scoring City programs by City staff against the community-defined goals.  Together, the process produced a ranked set of City programs used in the development of the 2010-12 Budget.

1 comment:

  1. You made some good points there. I did a search on the topic and found most people will agree with your blog. Thanks
    Health And Wellness

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