When it comes to public participation, Sedona City Manager Justin Clifton is a proponent of the old philosophy: The more the merrier.
That thought will be evident during this year’s budget process as the city will be shifting gears when it comes to receiving feedback from the community.
“We’re taking a page out of participatory budgeting by preparing a survey-type instrument that will allow people to consider and give input on a variety of budget scenarios,” he said. “At the same time we’ve revised the role of the citizen work group.”
Instead of focusing on reviewing all programs as they have in the past, Clifton said the city will get a broad overview of the budget and help bring a citizen perspective to what, if anything, is missing. So the group may identify program areas that they need that the city doesn’t currently have.
“Or, they might decide some analysis on non-program-specific things like staffing levels or training is in order,” he said. “They may recommend something new about financial management, such as our approach to debt and asset management.”
Unlike previous years where the work of the citizen group was crammed into a few days of the same week, with this new process staff will meet to give the group an overview, then they select the things they want to dig into. They break for six weeks while staff conducts research and prepares information, then staff goes back to the work group to review it all and make recommendations for the Sedona City Council.
“The bottom line is we’re trying to get more people involved and ensure that at every step in the process we’re adding
value,” he said.
When deciding how to approach this new idea, Clifton said the first thought was to ask residents to imagine their own city budget and what it would look like if they were in charge. And by having all new faces on the citizen work group, he’s hoping they look at things from a different perspective and are not anchored to what was expected of those on the work groups in the past.
“What people really want to talk about is what they want,” he said. “We get some of that from surveys and other sources. What’s important to know about the budget is that we’re reconciling competing priorities.”
He said they receive input from the public as to what it wishes to have. But, the struggle is determining how great that desire may be and what the public is willing to give up if those wishes are met.
In addition to the modified work group, the city is putting together a community budget survey. But instead of asking generic questions such as “Do you want more parks?” they plan to encourage those taking the survey to look at things from a city perspective.
“There are scarce resources, we can’t do everything, so what’s really important?” he said. “This is what councils sometimes struggle with.
“We’re going to ask specific questions that more closely mirror what the budget decisions are all about. Now, when we go to council, we can say, ‘Here are all the programs that staff put together; here is the insight the citizen group wants to share with you; and, here’s what our citizens who participated in the survey think about relative priorities.’ We’re hoping that’s a more inclusive participatory system and that the decisions we make are supported by more people.”
Clifton said even if they only get 300 responses to the survey, that may be a small percentage of the city’s population, but it’s 300 more voices in the process than they had last year or the year before.
The survey is expected to be available in late February or early March. The work group is set to meet for the first time on Jan. 21 and will give input on the survey’s questions.
Something else new that is currently being discussed is setting aside a specific amount of money — in his example $200,000. Citizens would then submit ideas of what types of programs they’d like to see those funds used for and then there would be a community vote. This would allow residents to feel as though they were spending the money and again, having more of a voice.
“We want more input but more importantly, we want more meaningful input,” Clifton said.
