HomeMy WebLinkAboutFCS-12-138 - 2013 Budget - Community EngagementREPORT TO:Finance and Corporate Services Committee
DATE OF MEETING:
August 13, 2012
SUBMITTED BY:Dan Chapman, Deputy CAO
PREPARED BY:
Ryan Hagey, Director of Financial Planning, 519-741-2353
WARD(S) INVOLVED:All
DATE OF REPORT:July 26, 2012
REPORT NO.:
FCS-12-138
SUBJECT:
2013 Budget – Public Engagement
RECOMMENDATION:
THAT in addition to public engagement methods already employed; namely holding all budget
meetings in an open and public format, receiving public feedback through mail, phone, email,
Facebook and Twitter, soliciting representative citizen input through a 2013 budget survey,
publishing content in Your Kitchener, and holding a dedicated public delegation forum where
individuals may address council directly, staff be directed to implement the following additional
public engagement processes as part of the 2013 budget process:
An interactive budget website including content such as frequently asked questions, a
tax rate increase scenario calculator, and potential reduction options voting tool
A social media event whereby citizens can contact staff directly regarding the 2013
budget to ask questions and make comments
AND FURTHER THAT staff be directed to report back to council on citizen feedback received
through these channels throughout the course of the 2013 budget process.
BACKGROUND:
At the Finance and Corporate Services meeting of May 7, staff presented report FCS-12-078
regarding the 2013 budget process. The report outlined that, at the conclusion of the 2012
budget process, the projected tax rate increase for 2013 was 5.87%. The report also
acknowledged that this rate of increase was not viable, and committed to reducing the staff
recommended budget by at least 3%, meaning the staff submitted tax supported budget
increase for 2013 will be no more than 2.87% (including the tenth instalment of the Economic
Development Investment Fund special levy).
At this same meeting, the committee directed staff to report back on August 13 regarding
potential tax supported budget decreases and opportunities to enhance community engagement
around the 2013 budget process. The motion made at committee and passed by council on
May 14 was:
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That a report be provided to the August 13 2012 Finance & Corporate Services Committee
meeting to facilitate direction setting on options to potentially reduce the projected 2013
Budget submission target of 2.87% by up to an additional 1%; and further,
That staff investigate and report back on the pros and cons of potentially undertaking any of
the following public engagement options for the 2013 Budget process including: use of
social media, creation of an interactive budget website, a citizen budget advisory board, and
representative survey questions.
This report responds to the second clause of the motion passed by council on May 14.
REPORT:
During the current term of council, the budget process has been advertised in City facilities, on
the City of Kitchener website, and through the City’s Facebook and Twitter accounts. Options
for providing feedback on the budget have included via mail, phone, email, Facebook, Twitter,
or in person during a dedicated public delegation forum where members of the public have an
opportunity to directly address council. In addition, separate consultation processes have been
put in place for specific issues with budget impacts (e.g. the LEAF fund).
Council has expressed an interest in enhancing the public consultation around the budget
process and directed staff to review four additional opportunities that could be incorporated into
the 2013 budget process. These four opportunities are:
1) Social media
2) Interactive budget website
3) Citizen advisory board
4) Representative survey questions
Engaging the public in a budget process is something with which many municipalities struggle.
And just because a certain methodology works well in one municipality, does not guarantee it
will be effective in a different municipality. That being said, there are generally accepted criteria
that can be used to determine if a certain consultation method is more effective than another.
Significant research in this field has been completed by Carol Ebdon and Aimee Franklin.
Carol Ebdon, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha’s School of
Public Administration, and the Chair of the Masters in Public Administration Program. From
2004-2009 she served as the City of Omaha’s Finance Director and serves as an advisor to the
Budget Policy Committee of the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA).
Aimee Franklin, Ph.D. is a Presidential Professor at the University of Oklahoma and is the
Director of Programs in Public Administration in the Political Science Department.
1
In their article Searching for a Role for Citizens in the Budget Process, Ebdon and Franklin
suggest the following characteristics will make participation efforts more effective:
1
Ebdon, Carol and Franklin, Aimee L., Searching for a Role for Citizens in the Budget Process.
Public Budgeting & Finance, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 32-49, March 2004.
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Participants are representative of the broader community
Participation is open to large numbers of participants
Input occurs early in the budget process
Participation includes two-way communication between citizens and officials
Citizen input is considered by decision makers
Input reveals sincere preferences of citizens (i.e. citizens consider willingness to pay
issues and budget tradeoffs).
The chart below summarizes the ranking of the four suggested engagement options against
these criteria. A detailed discussion about each option and the associated ranking is provided
after the chart. For each criterion, options were ranked on a scale of 1-4, where 1 is the lowest
and 4 is the highest fit with the criterion. The higher the overall score, the higher the
effectiveness of that method of public engagement. Please note that the criterion “input
considered by decision makers” was not ranked as there is no way of knowing if the input
provided through any of the options would be considered more or less by council. The
maximum score possible is 20.
InteractiveCitizenRepresentative
Social
BudgetAdvisorySurvey
Media
WebsiteBoardQuestions
Participants
represent broader 2314
community
Open to large
3412
numbers
Input occurs early
3214
in process
Two-way
3241
communication
Input reveals
preference of 1423
citizens
TOTAL1215914
Based on the criteria suggested by Ebdon and Franklin, all of the options with the exception of
the citizen advisory board rank highly. This suggests that the other three options are stronger
alternatives than the advisory board.
More information about each of these options is provided below including some rationale for the
rankings, the pros and cons of each option, and recommendations for implementation as part of
the 2013 budget process.
1)Interactive budget website
An interactive budget website could take many formats, but for the purposes of ranking against
the criteria, staff assumed that the website would include some dynamic fields where residents
could easily calculate the effect of various tax rate increase scenarios and vote on different
budget scenarios, but there would be no direct interaction with staff via the website. Based on
this assumption, the website is the most accessible option to the public and ranked highest for
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being open to large numbers of people, which should also make it reasonably representative of
the broader community and their preferences. The content on the website will allow citizens to
see the impacts of certain decisions, so they will have an opportunity to consider the
costs/benefits of various budget tradeoffs. For the 2013 budget process, the website would not
be operable until later in the year, so input would not occur very early in the process. As well,
based on the assumptions listed above, the website would have limited two-way
communication.
ProsCons
Available to anyone with internet accessLimited two-way communication
e.g. City posts information, citizens
o
Accessible at any time
vote for certain options
Citizens can create their own “what if?”
Input provided by citizens could be biased
scenarios
since it is anonymous
Little staff time required to maintain
2)Representative survey questions
As outlined in the first section of this report, a survey has already occurred, meaning that the
input happened early in the budget process. This was done so that the input of the survey could
be used to inform the potential reduction discussion also included in this report. The input from
these questions is the most representative of the broader community and reveals the preference
of citizens as the participants for the survey were randomly selected, and the questions asked
were directly related to their preferences related to tradeoff between taxation and service levels.
A copy of the survey questions is included in Appendix B. The survey ranked low in terms of
two way communication since, by its nature, the survey is only one-way communication. It also
ranked low in being open to a large number of people as only those selected to complete the
survey (175 people) were able to participate, although representative.
ProsCons
Survey participants are randomly selected Only small sample of community involved
and therefore should represent the
Input is only one-way
community as a whole better than all other
options
Survey happens early and can inform the
rest of the budget process
Little staff time required to develop
questions/analyze results
3)Social media
In ranking against the criteria, social media was defined to be the City’s Facebook and Twitter
accounts. These two engagement technologies scored well for being open to a large number of
people (nearly 3,000 Facebook likes and over 4,500 Twitter followers), occurring early in the
process, and providing two-way communication. Social media has regularly been used to post
information about upcoming budget meetings and staff are recommending expanding its use to
include an “ask the expert” session regarding the budget whereby citizens would be able to
directly interact with a subject matter expert about the City’s budget. Social media scored low
for representing the broader community and revealing the preferences of citizens, since the
people interacting with the City through social media are self-selecting to follow the City in that
way, and do not necessarily represent citizens in a statistically significant way.
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ProsCons
Available to anyone with Facebook or Input would only reflect the users of the
Twitter accesstechnologies employed
Available at any timeRequires regular monitoring and therefore
substantial staff time
Communication is two-way
Input can easily be passed on to others by
“sharing” (Facebook) or “retweeting”
(Twitter)
4)Citizen advisory board
For the purposes of ranking against the criteria, the citizen advisory board was defined as a
small group of citizens (e.g. approximately 10 people) who would meet a number of times
amongst themselves and/or with staff, and would have direct input into the budget process.
Based on this definition, the citizen advisory board ranked well against the criteria for two way
communication, as they would have opportunity to interact directly with staff at their meetings to
get additional budget information. But the ranking in all other categories was low. A citizen
advisory board is made up of a very small number of people who may self-select, and therefore
is not open to large numbers of people. And because it is made up of a small number of
people, unless the selection process is completely open and has significant public input, the
likelihood that it represents the broader community and the sincere preference of citizens is
limited. Finally, the input provided by this board would not be able to occur until later in the
2013 budget process, as time would be required to develop the terms of reference, solicit
volunteers, select the board and find mutually available meeting times.
Staff are aware that the City of Waterloo had a Citizens’ Budget Task Force in place for the
2012 budget. In preparation of this report, staff briefly discussed the Task Force with City of
Waterloo staff and reviewed the materials produced by the Task Force, which are posted on the
City of Waterloo website. Based on staff’s review of the posted material, the Waterloo Citizen’s
Budget Task Force:
Consisted of 11 members, all of whom held some sort of postsecondary education or
professional designation (e.g. accountant, engineer)
Met more than a dozen times to discuss various aspects of the 2012 budget, from May
2011 through January 2012
Produced two reports and two presentations for the consideration of council, and
provided a status update to council in August at a council budget workshop
Presented a number of recommendations to council, but many of them were not directly
related to the final approved budget as they were either:
General in nature
o
E.g. establish a structured plan to embark strategically on an internal
culture shift to an efficiency culture that achieves ambitious targets; or
Not specifically related to the budget
o
E.g. annually report, in an easy-to-understand format, a 10-year trend
table of balance sheet, income statement, and total reserves, including
Management Discussion and Analysis
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From discussions with City of Waterloo staff, the following additional information was provided:
In addition to the Task Force meetings, sub committees were created to further review
specific topics in more detail
A significant amount of staff time was required to provide information to the Task Force
and the various sub committees
Staff from a number of departments were required to present information
o
depending on the topic being discussed
The Task Force was approved by Council for the 2012-2014 Budget with a sunset
clause in the initial terms of reference of 2012 budget approval
The Audit Committee terms of reference have been expanded to include an
o
advisory role relating to budget policies, process, and variance reporting.
ProsCons
Opportunity for significant dialogue Board is very small
between citizen advisory board, staff and
Selection process could produce a board
council
that does not represent the broader
community
Board is not available at all times
Significant amount of staff time required for
meetings and responding to questions
Conclusion
The four potential opportunities for public consultation were reviewed by staff and ranked
against selection criteria suggested by authorities in the field of municipal budget consultation.
Staff are proposing to implement alternatives from three of the four options identified by council
which will significantly increase the amount of public engagement in the budget process and
allow citizens to provide additional input through a number of different public forums. As well,
staff are recommending that they report back to council regarding the feedback received
through these channels as part of the 2013 budget. These measures will augment the existing
consultation efforts already in place for the 2013 budget.
ALIGNMENT WITH CITY OF KITCHENER STRATEGIC PLAN:
Foundation: Efficient and Effective Government
Goal: Financial Management
Strategic Direction: Strive for competitive, rational and affordable taxation levels
FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS:
The public consultation options recommended as part of this report will have no incremental
financial impact, as they will consist of using existing technology and staff resources.
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT:
Additional community engagement options regarding the 2013 budget process are directly
addressed as part of this report.
ACKNOWLEDGED BY:
Dan Chapman, Deputy CAO (Finance and Corporate Services)
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