A New City Budget Process to Include YOU!

Wow. This is what some of us progressives have been dreaming about for a long time. Words like “participatory budgeting” being spoken by the staunchest Democrats! And Soglin has a vision for how to do city budgeting better. The council seemed a little more trapped in their ways and couldn’t seem to figure out how it might work, but had some ideas. Please see second post about the state of the city. I have an early meeting and some important things to do at work, but am working a half day, so should have more up later. But first, the process!

After Dean Brasser briefed the council on how horrible the budget is going to be, you know THE WORST BUDGET EVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE presentation, without all the hysteria of the previous mayor. Mayor Paul Soglin added some things he thought might make the budget even worse. But this time, it didn’t seem like a show. This time, it feels real. All the state catastrophe and bad times ahead make it seem that we might not “get lucky” the way we used to. And so this mayor, who doesn’t think he has all the answers and that he’s going to just make the “tough decisions”, this mayor wants to hear from YOU! He wants to get people involved! He wants to include those most affected. It’s very, very different, check it out. And check out how some on the council can’t quite wrap their head around how this could possibly work. Some want to just get it over with, others seemed to embrace it a little more.

THE MAYOR’S PITCH
Mayor Paul Soglin says that traditionally, the process for operating budget is for city agencies to work off last years budget and they submit their requests to mayor and mayor and comptroller review and the executive budget is given to council and then they start a process through the fall that ends with budget in the fall with the necessary statutory hearings. He says in a few instances its different, the Board of Public Health would review priorities and work with staff and discuss budgeting. What they would like to do with the operating budget is establish a group of clustered meetings to allow for input from stakeholders before agencies submit the budgets. Lauren Cnare and Shiva Bidar-Sielaff have worked on the clusters, Satya Rhodes-Conway and he looked over them, its 5 clusters, it might be expanded to 7 or 8. For example the Public Safety Review Board and the ALRC have a deep interest in public safety, they might, with staff, sit and participate in public discussion about what they want to see. The planning agencies are all in one cluster, it includes economic and community development and transit related items. We have half a dozen boards that could meet – he’s thinking transit might be different from planning and economic development. But in the next few months he wants to have legally scheduled meetings, have one board or commission serve as lead and have them be joined by others, some committee and board members might want to go to more than one. The goal is not that I want $40K for this or $68K for that but a discussion of content, policy and what are the important objectives we are trying to reach and how to reach the objectives. He says they have been sent link to GFOA website with best practices in public budgeting, they have 5 sets of principles and elements and then then practices and examples of how it is carried out in various communities. When this document was developed, we were starting to do this in Madison and some of the Madison practices became incorporated in the document. The financial policies you see are much of what Dean Brasser (see next post) described tonight. They Mayor he reads of various policies, says it is going to take any community a number of years to implement something like this, some policies might be dated, some might not work but we should attempt to implement what is worthwhile particularly in the public process and input. He wants to explain how it happened we have this current system, and its not just us, but others have the present system. Its not the development of an executive process, he asks why does public participation come at end instead of the beginning? When we have public participation in beginning it puts pressure on bureaucracy and elected officials, once the budget is submitted, you have expectations and accountability, which a lot of people would like to avoid, as to why things are not included and why are we being ignored. We got some examples like Health and community services and CDBG operate with input early on, and from the standpoint of a healthy community and process we should do it right, we should have the public input at the beginning of the journey not at the end when 99% of the budget is locked up. This reflects a better effort in public planning in terms of linking values and implementation. That will serve us well, we are not able to do it all at once, there is not enough time to do it for the capital budget – this is opportunity to do something in an open forum and with meaningful as results. We will make some mistakes and wrong turns and there are some dangers, small groups of people can have disproportionate influence on the process so it is incumbent on us that the invitation to participate is genuine and people who embrace this are reflective of our communities. We need to make sure its not just a small portion of Madison that shows up.

COUNCIL QUESTIONS FOR THE MAYOR
Sue Ellingson asks how this will happen, will it be like hearings.

Mayor says he wants to stay away from hearings, he does not want the classic example of a table up front with group of people listening then an individual comes with hat in hand to state their case, he is hoping it can be more in round table format, more exchange and back and forth. We need preparation about what agencies do, they need to put stuff out on the website, we have only a few weeks to do this, we need to get some basics, there is so much that goes on here that needs explanation. He wants more of a discussion. This is not Judge Roy Bean, where he says – you want your due process, we’ll give you your due process then hang you. Lets me more than a procedural republic, lets have it have meaning.

[OK – stop right here! Can you believe we finally have a mayor of the City of Madison that is saying this? Who understands this is a risk for elected officials, that this will be hard, but he wants to do the RIGHT thing instead of the politically expedient thing? That he wants to hear from the public instead of constantly wishing that they would go away and stop bugging him! Who is pushing the council to do the right thing, not what is right for him! This is an INCREDIBLE shift. Many people might not see it or realize it, but this is MAJOR. Seriously. When I supported Paul Soglin, this was the mayor I hoped we would get. At the moment (yeah, who knows how long this will last!) I could not be more pleased! I’m so happy Madison is in such good hands! I know, its crazy, but yes, this is a compliment, a glowing compliment coming from ME! I think I might be his number one fan!]

Bridget Maniaci asks what is the time line.

The Mayor says the end of July.

Steve King asks about the capital budget.

The mayor says we will have to continue as we are, we’ve got to get going, he wishes we could do it somewhere along the way this summer, before its too far advanced, they already had their introductory meetings this week, they have to start now.

Lisa Subeck says when he talked about clusters, she wonders if the ALRC and PSRB could be linked with community services.

He indicates that is possible.

Maniaci says plan commission not on the list.

Shiva Bidar-Sielaff says this is just a draft.

mayor says something to work from

[I must have looked like a fool grinning through this whole portion of the meeting. You mean its not an idea that the council has to take or leave, that you want input? That’s crazy! That’s a 180 degree change. I know the council is grumpy that Soglin asked questions about things that are already done, but damn! This is a radical change that gives them more say in what is going on – I hope they don’t blow it and can appreciate that this is a Mayor that wants to do the right thing for the City of Madison – not himself!]

Bidar-Sielaff says that one suggestion she has that she had no opportunity to discuss with the mayor, is that given how quickly this is happening, she wants us to think about other ways to participate than coming to a meeting, and the fact that a round table discussion is not good with 200 people, but she doubts there will be that many people interested. She says it is really important to engage our constituents so they can engage in the process, we need a survey, it needs to be focused on what we want to get at.

Maniaci asks Cnare and Bidar-Sielaff if this is in framework of existing meetings for committees or an extra meeting?

Cnare says that they haven’t gotten to the next steps, we have to agree with framework then call in the chairs of the committee and staff and talk to agencies and committees, is there a match that will be made? She says might not be joint meetings, its a scheduling nightmare.

The Mayor says they may not be able to do 100% of the budget.

Cnare says administration might not be a priority, for example.

Maniaci asks about 5 meetings where alders, committee members and citizens are there, will we meet in gymnasiums?

Ellingson says they used twitter to see how would solve the federal deficit.

Jill Johnson says she did that exercise on line.

Maniaci is worried about open records.

Cnare asks about her charts.

Someone said they don’t want 10 meetings.

Mayor has to leave. He introduces two new members of this staff.

COUNCIL CONTINUES TO DISCUSS AND FIGURE OUT WHAT THIS MEANS
Larry Palm asks about Board of Public Works, he says most of the infrastructure is in capital budget.

Cnare says when they did this they didn’t know the capital budget was off the table.

Palm says but there are operating costs, continued improvements and repairs are a concern, that effects staffing levels, the less we spend on capital, the less we need staffers to do the planning and that is operating budget.

Maniaci asks about nights of the week – she suggests they meet on Thursday or Sundays.

People shift uncomfortably in their seats – and someone says but then its summer weekends?

Subeck says we just have to deal with it.

Bidar-Sielaff says for one committee it could be the night that the committee regularly meets. At least on committee using their time – hopefully one with a few alders on it. They are relying heavily on the mayor’s office for scheduling, we have to work together, but there will be conflict and during the summer so need to find other ways to hear back from them.

Maniaci asks if they can do a wiki.

Cnare says they need to utilize technology, but then bring it together for us and agencies, we should talk to IT.

Ellingson says when reading about participatory budgeting, people chose to be on a committee, there was one meeting for everything all at once, if Bill Smith smith cares about the library he gos to the library committee and at end all come together, maybe we could just pick one day, all day long.

Subeck says the only give people one opportunity.

Ellingson says but they can participate by twitter.

Maniaci says we do three days of budget, what if three days of hearings, it could be a Monona Terrace, lets do it and be done.

Bidar-Sielaff says that she is not sure how many our schedules will work.

Ellingson says people aren’t going to be able to come, that’s just the way it is.

Bidar-Sielaff says if its just 2 days they might not be able to focus that much time on this.

Maniac says it depends upon how you do it. Do we want to stretch this out forever, or do it over 4 or 5 weeks. We could do it Sunday, Monday, Tuesday.

Cnare says committees still need to do business or hold regular meeting – plan commission doesn’t spend money, except they set all kinds of priorities and plans, but what if citizen wants more money then they have role, then they are back in the mix with 2 long meetings a month.

Joe Clausius says why do 5 different topics? He says if they did it in three days it would be a tremendous waste of time, there are hot button items, some will get a whole lot of people to come, some not many, we should do one or two areas and try this once and refine it from there, suppose it doesn’t work?

Cnare says they could grab one and try it, like infrastructure and public safety.

Cnare says community services and development would get a whole lot of people too.

Subeck asks if the goal is to gather public input or involve the committee members?

Cnare says public and committees to hear feedback and then they direct priorities.

Subeck says if hearing people, then one or two nights but if its really interactive, it will be more meetings.

Cnare says mayor says more like we are doing here, with a back and forth. Then I missed a bunch of what they said.

King says that he is envisioning out load but his is thinking they need to educate the public, if they are interested in the library, they are probably an advocate for the library, our issue in budgeting is there is no room for growth and we need to contain everything, he needs input on fire vs streets vs everything else, we will just get everyone who is interested in their public interest and put forward their case, how do we bring it all together.

Johnson says its the prioritization and choices not about I love dog parks, it is dog parks vs police officers, its those awful choices, that was a silly example, but elder care vs police is where the real discussions fireworks will come.

Palm says that need poeple who will focus on the discussion, he went to the JFF thing, they asked how can we create new solutions to money problems and work collaboratively and not have overlap – they said tell state to give us more money, but that doesn’t help me when I do the numbers. At the end of day we need to hear about what is in the budget.

Johnson says the beauty of the New York Times interactive thing, they had you make policy choices, I had so much fun with it and as I made policy choices the numbers changed.

Cnare asks if it would be like a few years ago when the school district did the $1 budgeting thing, it was not well attended, they gave us a dollar and we had to figure out what you jettison, it was a compelling exercise, but poorly attended, would this be any different> There was a premise, this is the mayor’s idea, he needs to clarify, we can ask for what we want, but we have to compare. Cnare says he is going back a step, its like zero based budgeting, but this is zero based priorities. This one step will not help compare a and b. The goal is to figure out what are the departments priorities. Then people would be able to see pen vs paper. We should clarify with him.

Anita Weier says priorities are important, and efficiencies, people might have good ideas for that.

Maniaci says have to open it up for people to say what are your ideas to save money, and make sure that happens for staff, because on the front lines they might see opportunities for savings, very directly and anonymously. Also the public meetings she is wondering how the committees fit in, but to Larry’s point, we need to give people parameters, and not sure if will show up if not fight for one things, if have to make tough decisions they won’t show up.

Satya Rhodes-Conway says they won’t show up if there’s not good information and an opportunity to interact, she hopes that the first phase is not about priorities between projects, if we want a priority setting phase, these are two different things. The first thing mayor is asking for is staff, committees and public who are interested for advocating for the area or things in that area, is what public health is doing more important than police, that discussion should focus on the mission of the agencies and departments, what do they do and what does it cost, this is the subheadings in the budget categories. This a check on if this that right? Is what we are doing now related to the mission we articulated, to give feedback on levels of service, are they doing a good job, are there more efficiencies? Focus within the categories, then do prioritizing, what is most important, most related to core mission, what do we have to do. Maybe there will be new efforts, maybe some things are not relevant enough and suggestions about budget or effort are based on the priorities percentages, then different discussion about priorities and doing prioritizing between them, not with committees and staff but mayor and council and public. Think about it in two phases, the first is good information to departments, agencies and committees that oversees them and what public thinks about how we function now and how prioritize work going forward. That will lead to good public input, then share frustration about larger level of prioritization, can’t ask one set of meetings to do both.

Cnare says at end of day, there will be many more meetings, it unfortunate it comes in summer. It is important to sit down with mayor, they will type up the list and share it with you to make sure your thoughts are captured and then can add. Not sure that department heads and committee chairs know about this, then get their feedback, then set deadlines and talk to it for getting information. Also need to make sure in places people can get to.

Maniaci says we have diverse background of people on committees, they need good background info on the budget, alders go through it every year, there is a learning curve, we nee to figure out what materials we need to get them so they understand what we are getting at.

Bidar-Sielaff says that giving them background and parameters of what we want or we will be disappointed.

Maniaci says we need to break it down simply and show them this is how it impacts spreadsheets and charts and graphs we just went over.

Palm says that problem with the school district effortwas the details people went into were lost, you glossed over it, if you spent $20 to debt service, $50 to staff, and someone asked can I make it 49? Sure, you you could but we don’t get into what you are cutting, that is the hard part, in the end, we need an instrument to let people pull out those details. He did a resident survey, one person said they would collect garbage more often, other said collect recycling more, those are opposed and difficult to manage and that is the detail we need to find out about, no one is going to say why don’t you cut recycling, if we say we need your feedback, that is where twitter things are coming from, once a month recycling, we need a system to collect that information, need to discuss the details.

Subeck says that the meetings are not necessarily the best venue for the information to be given, she thinks before the meetings they need a high quality in depth survey to go through services in department, not staffing levels, the services, need a good survey and take the data and score it, that would reach the non-meeting goers, most of city will not make it to the meetings.

Bidar-Sielaff says that we have survey data out there, it doesn’t get that specific, she would caution us on the time line, these are all good ideas and we need to work in phases, so we get more participatory in next few years. Its unfortunate we are implementing this when we are asking what you want us to cut, that is a difficult question to pose, as alders we get information about what your district thinks are priorities and what we do is a compilation. This is a way to get our priorities together and this is also another exercise that is important. That is the second level. We look at their priorities and it will be a difficult conversation. Who gets what, recycling is whole city but big pots of money in important projects is on one district or another, we are going to spend all time doing process and not think about the budget

Chris Schmidt says he went to a presentation from the alder form Chicago, but one of the things they learned quickly was – and theirs was only capital – they learned if they pit projects against each other, none of them get enough votes, we need to bundle sidewalks and not break it down more. For the first year we don’t want to jump right to that point. There are ways to manage public input, we could do a sticker exercise, you’re mocking it but don’t mock it yet, haven’t heard anything better. We can have a board up with topic areas and its a subarea, a sheet with one number and weight priorities, you can tell how many people think it is important and whee priorities are.

King says that started off saying we need to prioritize, but Rhodes-Conway makes sense, we need to do it in two layers, it struck him at the neighborhood resource team meeting that often it is not things that happened in a single year, they have payoff downstream, if we have a discussion about priorities and mission it will be a more thoughtful debate about what do to with the money, the budget looks year to year, if we cut now, what is impact 3 years, we don’t ask that, groups can come to that conclusion so when prioritize then more armed to make thoughtful decision on that vs something else. We can get to that level of thoughtfulness.

Cnare says it is a two step process, one is what Bida-Sielaff explained and then budget piece.

King says she laid it out nicely.

Cnare says we need to know what are ideas around the table, before get to table and talk about nitty gritty.

Cnare says she was at a neighborhood association meeting and said they are asking people to think about it, and at every meeting a number of people said I can’t make the comparison until know how much costs to save, we need that list, would give it up but if save 29 cents its not worth it.

Cnare says thanks and wraps it up.

[One last comment. This is MAJOR. This is AWESOME! At least for a local government geek like me. This is SERIOUSLY cool. I’m positively giddy. Makes me wish I HAD run for council, I just never thought we would see this day. The public is once again appreciated and welcomed in city hall! This is a major step . . . and then we can agree or disagree. I’ll say it again, this is AWESOME! ]