Only one agenda item dominated agenda for Tuesday’s City Council meeting, and it was a topic that has been discussed at many city meetings lately: Priority-Based Budgeting (PBB).

The council spent the meeting discussing and debating the specifics of what exactly would be in the PBB, adding or eliminating words to clarify the text. A unanimous vote would approve the presentation and report presented to the council and finalize the definitions used to describe each of the five results used in the PBB process.

Following council’s approval, the next step for PBB is for staff to proceed to apply staffing and cost allocation to the city’s program inventory, then determine which will be scored against the definition statement. Staff believes it can complete PBB by the end of the summer and present it to the council in the fall for use in developing the 2019-21 budget.

The city has estimated it would cost $30,000 to develop and implement PBB. The annual subscription to the cloud-based budgeting dashboard is $20,000.

At the Feb 27. council meeting, Chris Fabian, the CEO and founder of ResourceX, gave a presentation on PBB to city employees. Fabian explained that PBB is a new form of budgeting that tries to match available resources with community priorities, provide information to elected officials, meaningfully engage citizens in the budgeting process and break traditional thinking of budgeting. According to the city, the five results of PBB are “Protecting Community Health and Safety,” “Protecting and Enhancing the Environment,” “Strengthening Economic and Fiscal Conditions,” “Preserving and Enhancing Infrastructure” and “Maintaining and Enhancing a High Quality of Life.”

City staff recommended the council accept the report and presentation, and discuss and finalize the definitions used to describe each of the five results used in the PBB process.

The council will next meet Tuesday, May 1 at the regular start time of 7 p.m.

Sharing is caring!