CPBB + Michigan Municipal League = Better Michigan Communities!

The Center for Priority Based Budgeting is in the business of assisting local government explore their role in successful economic development, understanding better where public sector investment could inspire a greater private sector contribution and better influence economic health (and clarifying the role of local government).

It’s not an easy issue, and yet it is one of the most important issues of our time. In our work facilitating the identification of community priorities, economic development and job creation are clearly among the very top in every place we've applied the Priority Based Budgeting process. From the City of Edmonton, Alberta (where they espouse the necessity of a “Diverse Economy”) to the Town of Cary, North Carolina (“Economic Vitality and Development”) to Lehigh County, Pennsylvania (“Economic Health”), what we do in government to strengthen the local economy could not be of more critical importance.

With this in mind, The Center for Priority Based Budgeting is proud to partner with the Michigan Municipal League for a full-day presentation in Ann Arbor, Michigan on April 9th. We'll be presenting Achieving Fiscal Health and Wellness through Priority Based Budgeting. Register here.

During this workshop, you will be introduced to two key concepts: Fiscal Health and Priority Based Budgeting. First, you will learn about the five (5) basic principles of “Fiscal Health” and then learn how to use proven tools and techniques to help ease your organization’s fiscal stress for the short-term and improve its financial sustainability for the long-term.  You will learn how to “self-assess” your own financial situation through a series of diagnostic questions that will validate where your organization is “healthy” and pin-point where your organization can improve. The workshop will also demonstrate the use of a simple, interactive diagnostic tool that can help any organization more effectively communicate its fiscal position to all interested stakeholders (including staff, elected officials, bargaining units, and ultimately, citizens) as well as serve as a monitoring tool to ensure that the organization remains the “picture of Fiscal Health”.    

Priority Based Budgeting

Local governments continue to face previously unknown financial and political pressures as they

struggle to develop meaningful and fiscally prudent budgets.  Revenues are at best stable (or even declining), while demand for services continues to increase.  Citizens believe that government budgets are “fat” and that this is ample waste to “cut”.  Civic leaders more often than not, focus on “across the board” cuts that spreads the pain equally – but also encourages mediocrity rather than excellence. Priority Based Budgeting is a unique and innovative approach being used by local governments across the Country to match available resources with community priorities, provide information to elected officials that lead to better informed decisions, meaningfully engage citizens in the budgeting process and, finally, escape the traditional routine of basing “new” budgets on revisions to the “old” budget.   This holistic approach helps to provide elected officials and other decision-makers with a “new lens” through which to frame better-informed financial and budgeting decisions and helps ensure that a community is able to identify and preserve those programs and services that are most highly valued.

The CPBB is no stranger to Michigan. CPBB Co-founder Chris Fabian and CCO Erik Fabian are both Michigan natives. In late Summer 2013, we spent a week in Detroit immersing ourselves in the trenches of critical local government issues, and went straight into perhaps the most interesting experiment in economic development we could imagine: the complete economic redevelopment of a City.

Our first article, focusing on the neighborhoods of the City of Detroit, Reversing the Trend: Might Corktown Hold the Key to a Greater Detroit Neighborhood Resurgence?, provided background context on the city's challenges and how entrepreneurship is playing a driving role in reshaping the downtown core and, slowly, the inner city neighborhoods. Our second article, Detroit: Bankrupt, but Not Broken, cast a spotlight on city governance through an interview with Nolan Finely of the Detroit Free Press. Our third article, Opportunity Detroit? Future City USA?, focused more on Detroit's burgeoning entrepreneurial start-up and tech sector, and how this explosion of new business development is having a transformative effect on the city.

We look forward to another return trip to Michigan and hope you'll join us. Register here.

Keep an eye on the CPBB blog for further updates. Sign-up for our social media pages so you stay connected with TEAM CPBB!

    

If you're thinking of jumping into the world of Fiscal Health and Wellness through Priority Based Budgeting we would certainly like to be part of your efforts! Contact us to schedule a free webinar and identify the best CPBB service option(s) to meet your organization's particular needs.

 

"DATA VISUALIZATION" for Local Government