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City staff reports program consolidation in priority-based budgeting; matrix due in 30 days
Summary
Staff told council the priority-based budgeting task force consolidated municipal programs from about 322 to roughly 105 community-facing programs and will produce a scored program matrix within about 30 days to guide budget choices and potential reallocations.
City staff gave the Casper City Council an update on the priority-based budgeting (PBB) review and said the task force consolidated the city’s community-facing programs and adjusted priority definitions based on public feedback.
Jill (staff) reported the team reduced the inventory of community-facing programs from roughly 322 to about 105 through consolidation and is finishing review of governance/overhead programs to determine whether costs should be treated as overhead rather than assigned directly to community programs. Jill said the task force also shifted several priority definitions — for example elevating environmental sustainability items such as parks and urban canopy — after reviewing citizen feedback.
Why it matters: staff said the next deliverable will be a scored matrix linking programs to council priorities; that matrix will identify programs that are high-impact and low-cost and, importantly, programs in the matrix’s fourth quartile (low impact, high cost, where other actors could provide service) that could be candidates for reallocation.
Key points: - Consolidation: community-facing programs reduced from ~322 to ~105. - Definitions: some program definitions were elevated from medium to high priority based on public input; staff intentionally did not move everything to high priority despite broad high-priority responses from the public. - Next steps: staff will complete governance-program mapping, connect programs to the scoring framework and present a full matrix for council review in about 30 days; staff also discussed longer-term goals of linking budget actuals to programs.
Council action: council members accepted the update and the staff recommendation to continue with the next two pilot programs and the matrix work; staff noted a longer-term goal to connect program-level actuals and budgets through accounting or integrated tools.
Staff said further parsing may be needed because public input tended to rate many items as high priority; the scoring matrix will help identify which high-priority items are the highest and which can be reconsidered as budget choices are made.
