It was a night for numbers as Benicia’s City Council discussed a proposed system for the city’s budget at Tuesday’s meeting.
The only item on the agenda for the council was Priority-Based Budgeting (PBB) and the confirmation of strategic results. PBB is an economic approach being used by local governments across America with the goal of matching available resources with community priorities, providing information to elected officials that lead to better-informed decisions, meaningfully engaging citizens in the budgeting process, and escaping the traditional routine of basing “new” budgets on revisions to the “old” budget
There are four levels of PBB: leveraging all of the community’s resources, fueling resources toward the results of tomorrow, relocating resources and rationing tools to stabilize the budget. There are also three questions that go along with PBB: what it costs, what it does and why it is in business.
Benicia and Oxnard are the two newest cities in California to adopt the approach.
The council spent the entirety of the meeting time learning about PBB. The council decided to send out a survey in the near future which all will allow citizens to voice their opinions on how the city may shape their budget. The meeting concluded at 8:30 p.m.
The council will meet Tuesday, March 6.

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