The City of Walnut Creek, California is among the
earliest-adopters of Priority Based Budgeting, having first implemented the
process in 2009. As Priority Based Budgeting Week continues, we wanted to share with you one of the most
significant breakthroughs to date in the work – highlighting what the City has
done on their own to transform the way they communicate about the budget with their
citizens.
So many of us are working so hard to make headway in
“authentic citizen engagement.” It’s not easy! One of our fundamental
objectives in creating the “unique lens” of Priority Based Budgeting was and
continues to be offering a way to “see” the budget in a way that is so easy, so
clear, any citizen, any elected official, any staff member, anybody could
understand immediately how decisions are made. Not only that, but we want to
make it so clear what decisions and what options are open to us; to provide
clarity where it’s sometimes uncertain – that was much of the focus of this September’s PM Magazine article.
This advancement from Walnut Creek offers such hope and
excitement about what’s possible. The City is pioneering in so many ways, not just
Priority Based Budgeting, and we encourage you to reach out to them (contact
Assistant City Manager / Administrative Services Director, Lorie Tinfow at tinfow@walnut-creek.org).
With the “2012-2014 Budget Story,” we are so pleased to
introduce you yet another innovation from Walnut Creek!
“A Community Connected: The 2012-14 Budget
Story,” seeks to share our budget information in a new way. It identifies what
we plan to do over the next two years with the resources placed under our
stewardship. It explains the processes we’ve put in place with the community to
set the goals that guided our budget decisions. And it tells our story in a way
that we hope will be more engaging and easy to follow, using graphics, photos
and short stories.”
- City Manager, Ken Nordhoff, from Page 1: The 2012-2014 Budget Story
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