The Mesquite City Council got its first in-depth look at the city’s new budget process Tuesday. Under the direction of first-year city manager Cliff Keheley, the city staff has been tasked with using a performance management model to prepare the budget instead of a line-item process, which was used in the past.
“The results will be evidence-based. We are focused on achieving improved results for the public,” said Ted Chinn, managing director of financial services.
Chinn walked the council through the methodology behind the change, which is designed to create better transparency and to allow the city to fulfill the highest priority items residents have identified.
“Coming out of a recession, we understand our revenues are not going to be what they were prior to the recession,” he said. “We are living in a new economy, and Mesquite’s tax base just doesn’t support the demands that the community expects and desires, so we have to be smarter [with the budget.]”
In the past, division directors assessed their department’s needs and asked the City Council to allocate funds according to what they believed the department needed. Under the new format, the division heads will prepare a budget that includes budget offers, which are new items that would fulfill various city needs, if added. The new process is focused on what the public wants.
“It is a hybrid of a process called budgeting for outcomes,” Chin said. “Budgeting for outcomes focuses on results, and not dollars and cents. The process shifts from paying for costs to buying results.”
Each of the budget offers must include an explanation as to why it is needed, how it will impact the city and what council priorities it will address. The council identified its priorities during its February planning workshop.
“This is a way of doing business we are going to ingrain into our organization’s culture over the next couple of years,” Chinn said.
As part of the process, the budget offers are ranked by priority and funding from most important to least important until funds are used up for that budget year. Any unfunded items will roll over to the next budget year, or be completed as funds become available.
“They will be deferred to the next year or beyond,” Chinn said.
Each of the budgeted items will be reviewed by a results team made up of city staff and various stakeholders to decide how effective they were.
The results of how the city is doing at addressing its goals is made easily accessible to the public online via a dashboard on the city’s website. The city staff presented the first glimpse of the dashboard during the city council pre-meeting in February, when the city of Plano’s dashboard was used to showcase how Mesquite would provide tracking for its residents to see the city’s successes and areas that need improvement.
The dashboard will show the public how effective the city staff is being with addressing the priorities set up by the city council.
“It will establish credibility and maintain trust,” Chin said.
The city staff plans to launch the dashboard in September by using some common items city track and standard goals. The City Council will make the final determination on what information will be tracked during the budget process, and they will decide what goals they hope to achieve.
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