Give feedback on the PBB Public Engagement Plan and approve staff to proceed with the deployment of the community input survey.

In May of 2019, the City of Flagstaff embarked on a journey to implement Priority Based Budgeting (or PBB). PBB is a leading best practice in municipal government budgeting and allows cities to re-envision how they utilize their budgets. Specifically, PBB enables cities to measure investments in priorities, create programmatic insights, and identify opportunities for future action. PBB also offers an array of opportunities for public engagement in the city’s budgeting process.
 
In order to achieve a greater public understanding of PBB and involvement in the City’s budgeting process, the PBB Project Team, consisting of Sarah Langley, Jack Fitchett, Heidi Derryberry, Rick Tadder and Shane Dille, has drafted a 3-part plan to elicit meaningful and diverse input from Flagstaff residents.
 

1. The first phase of the PBB Public Engagement Plan will be comprised of animated videos that provide an educational overview of what PBB is and how it will improve the City's budgeting process. These videos will be disseminated widely to the public and will help to create a foundational knowledge of PBB within the community.
2. Building on this foundational knowledge, the second phase of the PBB Public Engagement Plan is comprised of a community input survey intended to both inform and provide an opportunity to update the objectives under each of the seven Key Community Priorities that the Council established in September 2019. This survey will be hosted on Community Forum and will allow residents to state whether they agree or disagree with a specific objective, suggest edits to existing objectives, or suggest that new objectives be added. Prior to the survey being launched, staff will also make minor edits to the objectives to reflect prominent recent events and significant Council discussions (i.e. Council’s declaration of a climate emergency and the Black Lives Matter movement). It is important to note here that the seven Key Community Priorities were established with the intent that they remain fixed for extended periods of time. Accordingly, the objectives that fall below these Priorities are meant to be more fluid and will be the subject of this community survey.
3. Utilizing the updated objectives, the third phase of the PBB Public Engagement Plan will entail residents of Flagstaff participating in the “peer review” process of PBB. This participation will enable residents to sit alongside staff and collaboratively review, and if necessary, change, the scores of each City program. These scores become the data sets used to prioritize the City’s programs and services rendered to the community.

 
It is envisioned that the PBB Public Engagement Plan, comprised of the three phases specified above, will provide Flagstaff residents with multiple avenues for education on and participation in the City’s budgeting process.

There has been previous Council engagement on the topic of PBB:

• At the January 16, 2019, Council Budget Retreat, staff presented the topic of High Performing Governance. This included consideration for changing budget processes to a priority-based system. 
• At the April 2019 Council Budget Retreat, staff presented a budget that included funding for Priority Based Budgeting.
• At the May 2019 Council Meeting, Council approved the Sole Source License and Host Agreement with Resource Exploration, LLC for Priority Based Budgeting.
• At the September 2019 Council Retreat, Council provided input on the PBB Priorities and Objectives.
• At the October 2019 Council Meeting, Council provided further input on the PBB Priorities and Objectives and agreed upon a final version.
• At the December 2019 Council Meeting, Council heard an update on the progress of implementing PBB, specifically focusing on the Program Inventory and Program Costing phases.
• At the January 2020 Council Meeting, Council heard an update on the progress of implementing PBB, specifically focusing on the Program Scoring phase.
• At the February 2020 Budget Retreat, Council heard an overview of the online PBB tools that would be available for future use in analyzing Flagstaff’s PBB data.