Citizens offer ideas on budget

Simplicity, more input suggested

“Keep it super simple” is one of the recommendations made by a citizens group tasked with reviewing the budget as part of a city effort to get more input from residents.

The 2018 Neighborhood Leadership Academy class presented recommendations to the Yuma City Council during an April 17 work session. It’s the first year the academy is tasked with reviewing the budget.

City Administrator Greg Wilkinson told the group that the city wanted to have a transparent and open budget process that citizens could trust. He asked that the class give a report

to the mayor and council on the budget’s strengths, weaknesses and areas of improvement.

“We decided that our impact on this process would be to suggest ways to reach that goal,” NLA class representative Marjorie Harper told the council.

Their suggestions included making the budget easy to read and understand, enhancing the participation of the NLA members, presenting different budget scenarios online so that citizens can offer input and putting citizen input upfront.

“While I am the one standing before you today presenting our budget commentary, I am speaking with more than two dozen voices made up of local business owners, teachers, social workers, retirees, city of Yuma employees, and folks like myself. The many different life experiences of our class members brought variety to our discussions that took us down many avenues,” Harper said.

She thanked Chief Financial Officer Pat Wicks for acting as “sherpa” as they tackled the budget. He explained the city’s budget “to more than two dozen people with varying levels of expertise in budgeting and the tools used to decipher it. He had 15 weeks to explain funding sources and expenses and build on what each department presented about their budgets.” Some of the information left their “heads spinning a bit.”

The group realized that the NLA schedule would not allow them extra time to discuss budget issues. So some of the members held extra meetings and spent many hours in “thoughtful discussion and brainstorming.”

The group discussed HURF funding and road improvements, development fees and annexation of county lands, Public Safety Retirement fund and its impact on the overall budget, the loss of key personnel cutting a hole through the police, fire and water departments “because they can get a better total package elsewhere,” and the very shallow labor pool that forces recruitment of candidates from across the country.

She added: “We would love to tell you that we reached the peak of the budget mountain and that we all have a full understanding of the budget’s mechanisms and the thought processes used by city personnel to take things in and out of the budget. But, we can’t. We’d love to hand you a detailed list of items we think are the strengths and weaknesses of the city’s budget, but we can’t. There just wasn’t enough time.

“As much as some of us wanted to get down into the detail of the budget and come up with specific examples of where we thought there should be change, we really didn’t have the time or expertise to make suggestions in this area that wouldn’t be any more than shots in the dark.”

So the group took a different approach. Recalling what Wilkinson said earlier about the city wanting to have a transparent and open budget process that citizens could trust, “we decided that our impact on this process would be to suggest ways to reach that goal.”

To that end, the group suggested the following solutions:

1. Keep It Super Simple.” Class member Tom Stock offered the KISS concept centered on the idea that “less is more.” The draft budget available to the public online is 162 pages long.

“Reading that document is very difficult, even for folks like myself that consider themselves a numbers person,” Harper said. “Tom’s idea was to simplify the presentation of the budget numbers into specific charts and publish a very simple document that shows the pie charts for the funding sources and department expenses.”

Brock’s suggestion was to have this published on a lower cost medium such as a newspaper insert and have it available at all city offices and events after the budget is approved.

2. Build on what the city started. Class member Amanda Coltman noted that if the budget is included in the next NLA, then the academy should be extended by one class session and the group given more time in the later weeks to have open discussions about the presentation. This would prevent the need for extra sessions during the week that some members cannot attend.

Coltman also suggested that NLA graduates act as “Budget Ambassadors” and speak to the next class about the budget process and pitfalls this class experienced.

In addition, she recommended surveying citizens as to how they would like to get their information about the budget. Would they attend pop up events at libraries, retirement homes, clinics or city events? Would they like to have easier online access that allows input into the process or the opportunity to learn more about budget numbers?

3. Why reinvent the wheel? Class members wondered how other cities and towns engage their citizens in the budget process. This led to citizenbudget. org, an online budget simulator that educates and engages citizens in the budget process.

“Here is a method to bring hundreds, if not thousands of more people into that process. We recognize funding is an issue, but the cost of this product for a city of Yuma’s size was just under $5,000 annually,” Harper said.

4. Review the budget process and put citizen engagement up front. “We came into the budget process too late to have any impact on it,” Harper said.

“Did the experiment work? Was having the more detailed budget review a successful component of the NLA this year?” Harper asked. “The members of the NLA believe it was worth going through the experience. Only time will tell, but we think the city is moving in the right direction in this area.

“There are many groups and civic organization in our area that want to impact the budget. We feel the city needs to spend some time, resources and monies figuring out better ways to hear them.”

The other 2018 NLA class members include Ramon Altamirano, Anthony Arguelles, Marcelle Baker, Gemi Brassine, Jacqueline Butler, Edna Cordova, Jesus Esquerra, Estela Marin, Esther Markle, Lalenia Ohn, Keli Osborn, Tania Pavlak, Leroy Pooley, Effie K. Rosenbaum, Alisha Smith, LaShelle Smith, Miguel Sosa and Dan Symer.