July 14, 2014 · Exit133

Learn About the City's Budget, Submit Your Own Recommendations

A new round of Community Budget Input meetings on the City of Tacoma's 2015-2016 budget-setting process kicks off tonight with a meeting for residents of District 3. At these meetings residents will have the opportunity to hear more about the City's projected $6 million budget shortfall for the next biennium, and some ideas for fixing it, as well has learn more about the deferred maintenance and other expenses that could significantly increase that shortfall.

You can also catch a video, starring City Manager TC Broadnax, explaining how Tacoma's budget works, as well as some of the challenges the City faces this time around.

You can also take a whack at balancing your own budget on a new "microsite" from the City of Tacoma, in an interactive exercise using sliding scales for basic categories of services and a pie chart that responds to you inputs.

The City Council participated in its own initial round of budget priority setting earlier this month, and will continue to work along with staff to come up with a balanced budget. The City is planning on coming back to the public in mid-October when the budget is further along.

What does your budget solution for the City look like?

Filed under: Get Involved, City Government, Budget

7 comments

JDHasty July 15, 2014

What happened to "Back to Basics" TC? You stood in front of the community and tied your credibility to implementing a strategy that moves the City into a mode that "focuses like a laser on delivering basic government services." Tacoma government is incapable of even picking up trash on a weekly basis, but can "find" money to fund every discretionary project that comes along. Take your propaganda campaign back to Texas.
Xeno July 15, 2014

Haters gonna hate. You could give them every opportunity to provide input or completely not involve them and their reaction would be the same. See above. The exercise was fun but I wish the "other" category was explained more considering it is one of the largest categories. Overall too simplistic to get honest indepth feedback from the public other than you know roads come from Public Works, so give them more budget. Also, I swear I know that voice doing the overview of the budget stats, wasn't he a Mariner's announcer?
- JDHasty July 15, 2014
  
  The City has budget analysts and finance professionals on the payroll. This lame tool has been part of every charlatan politician's bag of tricks for decades. It is hauled out in front of gullible audiences to give the impression to citizens that there is nothing that can be cut from a jurisdiction's budget without severe impact on what residents consider indispensable to their quality of life. This is not how financially sound Cities are managed at all. What Tacoma probably needs is to go through what is known as a zero based budgeting process. Zero-based budgeting starts from a "zero base" and every function within an organization is analyzed for its needs and costs. Budgets are then built around what is needed for the upcoming period, regardless of whether the budget is higher or lower than the previous one. ZBB allows top-level strategic goals to be implemented into the budgeting process by tying them to specific functional areas of the organization, where costs can be first grouped, then measured against previous results and current expectations. This is not something that can happen in a one hour public session and it is also something that will come up against fierce resistance. Tacoma politics is owned lock, stock and barrel by a coalition of interest groups that have an interest in maintaining the status quo as a base line and grubbing for more and more every budget cycle.
  - Xeno July 15, 2014
    
    The Biennium budget is off 2% it does not require something as draconian as zero based budgeting. You could cut Police and Fire 5% and you'd have a 1% surplus. ZBB is a good way to deal with a freefalling budget. Perhaps it would have been a good measure in 2008 but not now. If anything I'd like to see Public Work's budget increased since their budget was wiped out in the previous biennium. I'm sure that the offset could be found in the "other" but it is important to find out what the "other" is.
JDHasty July 15, 2014

EXACTLY why "not now?" Please be specific. The City's finances are upside down. Expenditures are forecast to exceed revenues with no end in sight. Zero Based Budgeting would impact current stakeholders in the status quo who cannot justify the dollars programmed and budgeted. It would either free up funds for projects and programs that can be justified or would cut the cost of government overall. Zero Based Budgeting will come up against fierce resistance. Tacoma politics is owned lock, stock and barrel by a coalition of interest groups that have an interest in maintaining the status quo as a base line and grubbing for more and more every budget cycle. Zero Based Budgeting is not a panacea, it is a tool that used in conjunction with other reforms could however result in the type of paradigm shift Tacoma needs to become solvent once again.
- Xeno July 15, 2014
  
  Technically the City is solvent. It is paying all its debts. It has however deferred maintenance of facilities. Which just means it has expanded the life cycle of said facilities beyond their normal maintenance schedule. I think the smoothing plan for the vehicle fleet is innovative and other measures can be taken to deal with deferred maintenance. I think ZBB is draconian and its use is not to be a budget solution but to be used in budget freefalls, which we are not in that situation. It creates a politicized budget bureaucracy that actually decreases the efficencies of departments functioning correctly. In short it isn't meant to be a long term solution to a city budget at least.
  - JDHasty July 15, 2014
    
    The City maintenance and preservation backlog is a liability. Deferring maintenance and preservation on transportation and surface water Utility assets and extending the service life of the City fleet are classic examples of a bureaucracy Robbing Peter to Pay Paul. Unfortunately over the last two plus decades Tacoma has taken this practice to the nth degree and as a result all of our infrastructure, save that which is under purview of TPU, is in such a dilapidated state that it is quite possible (actually it is more likely than not) that if the status quo does not change drastically in the near future the City of Tacoma will bankrupt due to this practice. You simply cannot cavalierly take a hundred million dollar plus (and growing daily) liability off the books and act as though it doesn't exist.