Let’s talk about talking about budgets, Part II

The best budget engagement strategies force citizens to think like elected officials

This is the second in a two-part series on budget communications. You can (and should) read Part I here if you haven’t already done so. You can (and should) subscribe to this newsletter by clicking on the button below if you haven’t already done so.

Now that I’ve convinced you it’s OK to get a little weird to get folks’ attention on the budget, what’s the best approach to getting productive engagement on said spending plan? First, fold up the freak flag and put it away. Now it’s time for serious deliberation.

The best public engagement process for budgets forces citizens to think like an elected official. It puts them in a seat at the dais and requires them to look at the full picture of competing spending priorities. It should also encourage them to look ahead to see how decisions made today will impact future budgets.

Typically, when a citizen wants to talk to the city council or county board about spending, they are focused on a single issue. “We want more pickleball courts,” they say. (Or soccer fields or more frequent recycling pickup or whatever the topic du jour.) Elected leaders never have the luxury of making a spending decision in a vacuum. A good engagement program will make citizens go through the same give-and-take thinking an elected does when deciding what to pay for and what to forgo.

What follows is the story of how my former employer did just that. I wish I could tell you it was a proactive approach that begat such an amazingly effective (and award-winning) citizen participation process. Alas, it was a political crisis instigated by the firefighters’ union that started it all.

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Then (as now), the City of Round Rock, Texas, was experiencing rapid population growth. One of the more acute challenges at the time was timely fire and EMS response to the northwest corner of the city. In short, we were a fire station short. So the idea was kicked around, internally, of moving a station from the downtown area to the northwest. Downtown had overlapping coverage from other fire stations, while response times to the outer reaches of the northwest quadrant were well beyond the 8-minute standard.

Looking at the local firefighter association response, you would have thought we were cutting salaries in half, eliminating overtime and banning video game consoles from break rooms. They picketed. You read that right. Firefighters actually hit the streets with protest signs and marched outside the downtown station simply because City leaders were discussing ways to improve response times to the entire community. The horror.

Clearly, tensions were simmering between the firefighter association and City leadership. Shortly after the picketing, the association threatened to force an election to mandate the City meet NFPA 1710 standards for staffing and response times. Meeting that standard was well outside the City’s financial capacity (more on that below) as it would have greatly increased the number of stations, apparatus and firefighters — none of which come cheap. Still, the association was serious about starting a petition drive to force the calling of an election.

So the city management team got together to ask the question: What’s the problem? It’s a Good Government Truism that you need to ask yourself that question when the ship hits the sand. We’re talking the root problem, not the surface issue. In our case, the problem(s) were: first, for the first time in anyone’s memory, we had one department stand up and say, “We’re more important than anyone else.” Second, and more important, was the bottom line: growth in expenses was increasing at a faster rate than growth in revenues (see chart below). That was not sustainable. Unlike the federal government, local government must pass a budget where expenses equal revenues. (It’s known as a “balanced budget” for those of you working for Uncle Sam.)

In other words, we were going to have a hard time making future budgets work if forced to double Fire Department spending to meet the NFPA standard.

We boiled down the problem to this: We’d never really asked the public for their input on levels of service for ALL departments. We’d never had a gut-check on that question. Heck, maybe folks did want to double the Fire Department budget. But if they knew it would necessitate cutting every other department’s budget OR raising the tax rate by 50 percent, they might not be so enthusiastic about it. So let’s get the public look at the big picture – just like the city council has to.

Thus was born the 10 Year Plan citizen participation program designed to answer the question: How to deliver services that citizens want at a price they are willing to pay?

To prepare for this public engagement effort, the management team went through a series of planning worksheets developed by Bleiker Training that forces you to answer 196 pointed questions about your project, your organization, your processes, and your stakeholders. (More on Bleiker Training in a future newsletter.) The worksheets guide the development of a set of objectives for the citizen participation process that will result in the successful implementation of the project. It’s another Good Government Truism that you need to think long and hard before engaging the public on major, potentially controversial projects.

For this project, the most important objectives were the need to articulate in simple, unmistakable terms what the key issues were in choosing one level of service over another, and what tradeoffs were inherent in those choices. Further, we needed to make clear this was an advice-giving exercise, not a formal referendum on spending.

Good graphics are critical to telling a story about finances. The KISS method should be operative. Here’s the graphic we developed that explained the basic problem:

We kept it simple. No need to get into details. Anyone – even a math challenged former journalist like me – can figure out that chart.

To meet the other objectives, we used a way of explaining service levels we picked up at LEAD Training at the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia. It’s a car analogy that, again, pretty much anyone can understand when it comes to features, benefits, and costs: Lexus, Camry, Corolla. To wit: the Lexus is the most expensive, with the highest build quality and the most bells and whistles. The Camry is mid-range in cost, with solid build quality and fewer bells and whistles. The Corolla is least expensive, with good build quality and the most basic of the three. All three vehicles can get you from point A to point B. The question is, what do you want and what can you afford?

The challenge is then describing what a Lexus fire department looks like, compared to a Camry fire department compared to a Corolla fire department. Same for police, parks and open space, public infrastructure, recreation, and the library. And then assigning costs to each “model.” And not just costs today, but what costs would look like in 10 years.

In addition, we needed to let folks know what level of service we currently had for each department. Mix all that together and you get a graphic that looks like this:

OK, it’s not as simple as the previous chart. What this graphic shows was the Fire Department was just below a Camry level of service (see Level of Service Chart at top left), and what that cost. It also shows the staffing requirements and costs of Lexus, Camry and Corolla levels of service. It’s a lot, I get it. But even so, with all the information presented in this graphic, it didn’t really tell the whole story. Citizens needed to understand other issues the department faced, including what’s driving costs up and what the department can do to control costs. Thus was born this information template:

Last but not least, citizens needed to have context for where our budget stood in comparison to other cities, as well as get a sense of other issues the department was wrestling with. Hence, a chart that looked like this:

Every public facing department used this three-chart template to tell their budget story. This. Was. Hard. It took a few months of diligent effort and multiple meetings to refine the information without dumbing it down.

We determined the best way to present all that information was via an open house style meeting, where folks can come and go as they please, and walk through the exhibits at their own pace. There were no speeches given, but we did have directors and senior staff from each department there to answer questions. Here’s a picture from one of our open houses, held at an elementary school cafetorium.

Once folks walked through the exhibits, they sat down at a laptop and filled out what we called the “Advice Scorecard.” They plugged in the value of their home and then began choosing what level of service they wanted for each department. As they did so, the amount their property taxes would go up or down would display in real time. So they got immediate feedback on what their spending choices would have on their personal tax bill.

Here's a screen grab of an Advice Scorecard that shows the tax impact of down-the-middle Camry selections:

We held a series of these open houses at eight locations around town over the course of a month. Our goal was to engage with 400 citizens.

And O.M.G.

The results were, in a nutshell, mind blowing. When we tallied up all the input, folks supported a tax increase that would have required a rollback election. Nearly 9 in 10 of the 575 attendees chose increased spending. For those of you who don’t know Round Rock and Williamson County, Texas, this is a conservative community that prides itself on its fiscal constraint, especially when compared to the People’s Republic of Austin. (We kid because we love, Austin peeps.)

But it wasn’t increased spending across the board. Citizens were willing to pay more for public safety and infrastructure. Here are the combined Lexus-Camry-Corolla results:

So, what did we accomplish?

There were so many positives that came out of this process. Here’s a quick rundown.

1. On the budget, it gave the City Council some political cover to nudge up the tax rate. (The Council did not increase the tax rate such that it would have triggered a rollback election!) At the time, the City needed to increase the street maintenance budget – no small feat, as those of you in transportation and finance can attest.

2. The process forced each department to take a hard look at its gut-level mission, and then to put costs to levels of service.

3. It was a total team effort, so every department got to appreciate what every other department was doing and the challenges they faced. That second graphic, with the key issues, cost drivers and cost controllers, really tells a story.

4. Our citizens got the opportunity to meet with professional staff in an informal setting and learn they’re not a bunch of lazy bureaucrats just punching the clock for a paycheck. They met serious people dedicated to making the community the absolute best it can be. They also realized many of those employees also lived in Round Rock and also weren't interested in being taxed into oblivion.

5. Last but certainly not least, we got the firefighter association to STFU. The NFPA 1710 Standard was the Lexus level of service. As you can see by the chart above, it got selected fewer times than every other Lexus departmental level of service. Take that, picket boys!

To my mind, looking back on the process, one of the most significant accomplishments was the credibility we built with those citizens who attended. To wit: Our police chief at the time, Bryan Williams, shared with me after one of the first open house meetings that a couple of men sidled up to him after viewing the police information to ask, in a kind of stage whisper, “Chief, what do you think we should do?” Bryan never took the bait. He would respond, “This process isn’t about me and what I think we should do. It’s about you and what you think we should do.”

Solid. Gold.

What's your biggest challenge in talking numbers? Better yet, what's worked for you? Share in the comments. One of my goals for Good Government Files is to be a space where we can share and support one another as we go about the hard but rewarding work of public service. Our work is hard but oh so worth it, just like the 10 Year Plan.

See you next week. Better yet, see you in the comments.