AgdaPkt 2004-06-21 - Laserfiche WebLink

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� - ► q- . �-� REPORT To the Honorable Mayor and City Council From the City Manager June 21, 2004 Subject Results from Community Input Meetings on the 04-05 Budget Recommendation The material is provided for your information only. No action is requested. Background At your April 14, 2004 meeting, in keeping with our City's core purpose of, "Building a Great Community Together", we proposed that two meetings be held to receive input on the Fiscal Year 04-05 budget situation. Our goals for the process were to educate the public about our financial situation; get direct reactions from residents on our recommendations; and potentially receive some alternative ideas for Council consideration. A total of 33 people attended the first session, which was held on May 25�' in the Library Community Room. Invitations to Session 1 were limited to former participants in PACT and/or the Community Builders Program because we feft that their experience in those programs would bring a unique perspective to our budget issues. A total of 18 participants attended Session 2 held at the Community Activities Building on June 2" In addition to sending information to PACT and Community Builders who could not make the first session, notices were also sent to all e-news participants and a press release was issued to the media inviting participation. Each session began with a presentation by the City Manager and Finance Director followed by time for questions on the current financial situation and proposed budget cuts. We then moved into conversation groups and received report outs from each table on the most important things they felt Council should consider or ask questions about in reviewing the budget. This was followed by a presentation on the various revenue sources available to the City and input on potential sources of new revenue. Responses to the service/reduction expenditure cut recommendations and new revenue concepts are included as Attachments 1 and 2 to this report. No attempt has been made to categorize, group or otherwise manipulate the input, as we felt it would be most useful to Council in its raw form. Conclusion Our experiment with involving community on budget issues produced some interesting results and numerous opportunities for learning. First, 51 people who accepted our invitation have a better understanding of how the City budget works and the impacts of the proposed service/expenditure reductions.. While 51 is a small number when compared against the total population of Redwood City, it is significant with respect to the number of public comments normally received by Council on the budget. Secondly, those same people are, via this report, are providing direct feedback to Council on what