Early Bird Registration Ends Friday for ICMA's Annual Conference - Center for Priority Based Budgeting Presents 2 Workshops - PLUS: More on ICMA's Center for Management Strategies

http://icma.org/en/conference/registration_housing/registration_info?utm_source=Spotlight-Conference&utm_medium=Web&utm_content=1st%2BEarly%2BBird


Communities today struggle to develop meaningful and fiscally prudent budgets under financial pressures previously unknown. Most organizations believe that the responses they have made to the current financial crisis represent a permanent change in the way they will approach their budgeting processes. This session will explore innovative and proven tools and techniques needed to achieve both short-term relief and long-term sustainability through a unique and creative process called priority-based budgeting. Traditional responses such as across-the-board cuts, tax increases, sales of assets, pay freezes, and furloughs have not provided adequate solutions to address an organization's fiscal distress, but the question remains: what is the solution?

This session will discuss how local governments across the country have turned to priority-based budgeting to help align budgets and resources with the goals of their communities. This holistic approach to better inform budget decisions will ensure that a community identifies and preserves those programs and services that are highly valued and makes budget decisions in accordance with its findings. Priority-based budgeting has already helped 30 local governments from coast to coast deal with their fiscal realities through a step-by-step process that clearly aligns an organization's goals with the way it allocates its resources. This process was described in a 2010 Government Finance Officers Association white paper, "Anatomy of a Priority-Based Budget Process." This session will present case studies from Chandler, Arizona; Boulder, Colorado; Christiansburg, Virginia; Douglas County, Nevada; Grand Island, Nebraska; and Monterey, San José, and Walnut Creek in California, to illustrate how the process has been successfully used to address a community's unique budgetary issues.

Practice Groups 10 (Budgeting) and 11 (Financial Analysis)
Workshop Leaders: Chris Fabian and Jon Johnson, Cofounders, Center for Priority-Based Budgeting, Denver, Colorado