By Jennifer Eisenbart
Editor
How does one explain the difficulties of preparing a budget for 10,000 people instead of one?
The City of Burlington calls it the “Citizen Budget Partners,” and the third of an expected four or five meetings will take place tonight.
“By the end of the exercise, it allows for the budget partners to become active participants,” said City Administrator Carina Walters Tuesday. “Maybe identify some priorities that could be looked at in a future budget, and/or incorporated into the next result of our strategic plan.”
The citizen process is the first public step in putting together the 2015-16 operating budget for the city. While Walters said the city has a preliminary rough draft of the budget put together – meaning budgets submitted by the individual departments – she also stressed the budget is still in the preliminary stages.
“We’re just basically making assumptions, if you will, based on the limits of the levy and based on the mandates from the state,” Walters explained. “We’re being extremely conservative.”
Walters added that the city is running “very, very lean” on its budget – almost to the point where further cuts will have to come from cutting staff.
“It’s certainly become a challenge,” she said. “If the cost of living increases, and you really can’t increase much of your tax base because of restrictions, you still have to meet those cost of living increases.”
The citizen budget process allows for what Walters called an “open dialogue.” So far, city staff has outlined the process of municipal budgeting, and the department heads are giving an overview of their departments. The rest of those will finish tonight, and Walters said the floor would be opened for policy questions.
Traditionally, the citizen partners – who are invited by city officials – are asked at the end of the process to identify priorities in putting the budget together. Likely items to be considered this year will be three major capital improvement projects – the community pool, the public library and City Hall.
While the citizen input process is ongoing, the city is also planning for its strategic plan process, which will take place Oct. 16 and 17 – a day and a half’s worth of planning over a Friday and a Saturday.
That is essentially an open meeting for city staff, the Common Council and others.
“It’s not only going to be the Common Council, but we’ve also asked for participants from other boards and commissions,” Walters said.
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