City of Battle Creek Second in Michigan to Implement Priority Based Budgeting!

"Priority Based Budgeting helps us focus on these and align our resources to be the most efficient and effective in providing services." - City Manager Rebecca Fleury

The City of the Battle Creek is the second Michigan community to take on an entirely new way of budgeting, with the help of a Denver-based firm dedicated to helping local governments address their fiscal health and long-term wellness (this article originally published by City of Battle Creek).

Through priority based budgeting, staff is reviewing the entire city organization, identifying all programs, their costs, and their relevance through prioritizing each. This process has been implemented by almost 100 local governments across the United States and Canada and is recognized as a best practice by organizations like the International City/County Management Association (ICMA); the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA); the Alliance for Innovation and the National League of Cities (NLC).

Organizations that use priority based budgeting believe it increases the level of accountability and transparency and better communicates how resources are allocated through the budget process to achieve priorities of the community.

This is a new process for the city, and not a small one to begin, but moving in this direction was a goal City Manager Rebecca Fleury brought to the organization when she was hired in 2014.

“Understanding what our community thinks are our most important services is key to good governance,” Fleury said. “It is vital to the City Commission and this administration. Priority Based Budgeting helps us focus on these and align our resources to be the most efficient and effective in providing services. PBB is a transparent way to ensure, as public servants, we are being good stewards of the tax dollars with which we are entrusted.”

The goal of PBB is to make sure the city is spending tax dollars on the highest priority programs that meet eight "results," the term used to identify the role of city government. Through focus groups, surveys and workshops with staff and city commissioners, the City of Battle Creek's results are:

1. Access to recreational, cultural and leisure opportunities
2. Connected, accessible and reliable transportation network
3. Economic vitality
4. Environmental stewardship
5. Reliable and up-to-date infrastructure
6. Residents and visitors feel safe
7. Vibrant, healthy neighborhoods
8. Well-planned growth and development

The Center for Priority Based Budgeting has worked with the city along the way, as we work to fully implement this budgeting process in our next fiscal year, starting July 1. The CPBB helped develop "results maps," which detail the factors that influence the way we achieve those results. Staff then worked through a process of creating a program inventory in each department and assigning a value to each.

City staff and community members were asked to fill out a survey last spring to help inform those results maps.

The CPBB next will help the city develop a method for allocating our resources, based on our priorities. We will have a customized diagnostic tool that will assess spending in terms of our identified priorities (more information to come on that in the future), develop "target budgets" for departments, and analyze programs. Prioritizing in this way will help the city visualize and analyze how we spend money and how we might adjust spending according to our stated results and priorities.

Keep up with Battle Creek's progress with priority based budgeting at their website.

Congratulation to the City of Battle Creek and to Rebecca Fleury, city leaders, elected officials and staff for your tireless work and commitment to the City of Battle Creek and the citizens of the community. Excellent work and we at the CPBB are proud to partner with you!  

For new Michigan communities interested in priority based budgeting, check out our upcoming training sponsored by the Michigan Municipal League in partnership with SEMCOG, ELGL and the Alliance for Innovation. 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.

  

 

CPBB Fiscal Mission Control Center

Budget Season Brings Priority Based Budgeting to City of Humboldt, Saskatchewan

“What it really does is it helps us with making sure, overall, our dollars are prioritized to what we want,” - Roy Hardy.

The Center for Priority Based Budgeting (CPBB) recently partnered with our sixth Canadian Municipality, the City of Humboldt, Saskatchewan, in implementing priority based budgeting. Based on this exciting new project, Becky Zimmer with the Humboldt Journal penned the following article (full article below) titled "Budget seasons bring new budget system to Humboldt."

Thank you Becky Zimmer for your interest in highlighting the innovative work Roy Hardy, city leaders and staff have performed on behalf of the City of Humboldt and the citizens of the community.

Budget seasons bring new budget system to Humboldt

The City of Humboldt with be planning a different budget for 2016.

This year, city officials will be using the Priority Based Budgeting system developed by a group in Colorado to analyze where and how tax dollars  are being used.

The new system will take the Our Humboldt Strategic Plan that has been developed by the city over the past couple of years and rate money distribution based on the values the community has set for themselves.

City Manager Roy Hardy says that this tool will help find the direct linkage between the money spent on programs and the desired results that are measured at the end of the day.

“We now use a tool that  helps us identify what our goals are and how our resources are being applied against those results that we want,” says Hardy.

The desired results themselves are the values the city set in the Strategic Plan, while the measurement system is a rating of 1-4 on a scale of money contributing to these values to money that does not contribute to these values.

To get this rating for the programs, the city has changed how they are getting their data, as well, as well as looking at the cost of the programs in different ways, says Hardy.

Before the new budget was brought in, money was broken down by amounts needed for each department.

Now, the city is getting more finite numbers based on breaking the budget down by program funding, staff effectiveness, and resources going into the program, then comparing that to the desired result.

“We’ve got dollars, and people, and resources, and we compare that with the results we get.” Says Hardy.

To rate the programs last year, the department heads looked at the programs within their departments and gave them a rating, but then also looked at programs outside their department and gave them a rating as well.

This year, front line supervisors were also involved in the analysis of the programs, which has helped staff better understand the programs that the city is offering, says Hardy.

Department personnel were paired off, with one member of the department available to act as a reference point and then another member of a different department there as a second set of eyes on the program, says Hardy.

After all the programs are rated, what does that mean for programs at the bottom of the scale? 

Center for Priority Based Budgeting co-founder, Chris Fabian, says that a program that gets a rating of four does not automatically mean that this program is set for the cutting block but is a program that could use resources more effectively.

Relative to a program that is using resources to directly improve the community based on the values, a four improves on these values very little, says Fabian.

 

“It’s not about cutting but re-channeling so they are constantly focused on making sure all the resources are creating the greatest benefit for the community.”

Hardy also sees a four rating as a program that needs to use money and resources more effectively instead of being cut, but it starts the dialogue of looking at the program more closely.

“It may be not doing what you want it to do but is there a reason why we’re doing it,” says Hardy.

Going back and looking at the program, the city can then decide to still fund it, remodel it, or not fund it at all.

“What it really does is it helps us with making sure, overall, our dollars are prioritized to what we want,” says Hardy.

Fabian founded the center with co-founder Jon Johnson because, while working in municipal politics themselves they noticed a difference between what different programs municipal governments  were funding and the direction the community was headed.
 

“When it came to our decisions makers trying to make any sort of sense of our dollars we take in actually achieving results, it’s somehow not a very easy question to answer.”

Attitudes towards resources is another issue when it comes to moving dollars around, says Fabian.

A lot of communities just do not think they have enough money or resources. Fabian says that they do, but it is about using their resources more effectively.

“It’s just a matter of making sure you’re using it in the right way.”

Center for Priority Based Budgeting has over a hundred communities across the United States, as well as 6 within Canada, including St. Albert, Alberta and Lethbridge that just signed on last week. Humboldt is the first community in Saskatchewan.

Fabian says he applauds Mayor Eaton and Hardy for creating this momentum in Humboldt and who are eager to try something new when it comes to budgeting. A lot of that credit goes to having a strong leadership base, says Fabian.

“It’s not easy to take a large organization, like a government, and say we’re going to try to completely reallocate resources.”

Humboldt residents will have plenty of opportunity to see the new budgeting system in action.

The 2016 budget open house is set for sometime in March and will give residents the opportunity to see what Priority Based Budgeting can do.

“We’re going to get people thinking about this and thinking particularly about the questions that we’re asked to get the analysis that we did,” says Hardy.

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.

  

 

CPBB Fiscal Mission Control Center