Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Zero Based Budgeting topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Delray Beach launches zero-based budgeting review, schedules May department workshops
Summary
Budget Manager Savory Avery and CFO Henry Deck outlined a citywide zero-based budgeting exercise for FY2026-27, asking departments to complete templates showing minimum, improved and alternate service levels; staff will distribute templates and hold workshops May 5 and May 19.
Delray Beach staff on April 7 laid out a zero-based budgeting (ZBB) process for fiscal year 2026-27 that will ask departments to justify expenditures by program and identify minimum, improved and alternate levels of service.
Savory Avery, the city's budget manager, told the City Commission the approach breaks the organization into decision units or programs, uses prepopulated templates with current full-time equivalents and budget data, and asks department leaders to provide narrative and line-item explanations for each level of service. "We created templates to collect data from our department heads and division leaders about how each program ranks and aligns within the city's strategic goals," Avery said.
Avery and city staff displayed color-coded templates that ask departments to report a minimum level of service (pink), a desired or improved level (green) and an alternate level (yellow). The templates also include a right-hand section where departments must explain specific line items and how they would change under each scenario.
Commissioners urged transparency and practical expectations. One commissioner recalled a prior ZBB effort that yielded substantial savings and asked whether the process would be burdensome for small departments; Savory Avery and other leaders said the templates were intended to provide a baseline and that staff would rotate deeper reviews across departments over time. Chief Financial Officer Henry Deck cautioned that substantial savings may be limited on a first full rollout and emphasized that the biggest opportunities will likely be in larger, personnel-heavy budgets such as police and fire. "If what Chief Martin did was he was able to reorganize, restructure who's working on different tasks ... once it's done and it's done well, you start to get these amazing efficiencies," Deck said.
Staff will distribute the collected template matrices to commissioners and hold two dedicated workshop meetings on May 5 and May 19 for departmental presentations; staff said further ancillary discussions would continue in June in order to finalize a balanced budget recommendation in July.
Next steps: staff will send the ZBB matrices to the commission the next day, proceed with the May workshops, and continue data scrubbing and analysis ahead of departmental presentations.
