City of Bloomington, Indiana Facebook Live Town Halls, 24 Sep 2018

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From YouTube: Facebook Live Town Hall: Accounting and Accountability

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September 24, 2018

The Bloomington City Council will be voting on the City's 2019 budget proposals next month. With that in mind, we wanted to provide an opportunity for residents to learn more about the budget process as well as evaluate the success of the 2017 - 2018 budget.

View the 2017 Budget Update discussed in this digital town hall as well as a form for public comment on those updates here: https://bloomington.in.gov/city/budget/updates

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Okay, welcome and thanks for your patience as we resolve a few technical.

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Difficulties, I'm yael ksander, the city of.

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Bloomington communications director I'm joined here today for this facebook live.

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Town hall, with bloomington mayor john hamilton, also deputy mayor mick, renneisen.

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And administrative coordinator morgan wells, thank you so much for joining us.

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Today, it's budget season and that's what we.

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Like to call or another name for that is priority setting time here at the city.

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So we're going to be spending the next 45 minutes or so talking about the.

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Process of creating the budget setting our priorities with the mayor, deputy.

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Mayor and morgan, so we hope, you'll join in the conversation. Take the opportunity.

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To pose questions via the comments comments section on facebook and share.

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Your concerns about city budgeting, so we'll try to address your inquiries over.

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The course of the next hour, so, as you know, if you read in a newspaper the.

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Heads of the city departments have been making their 2019 budget presentations.

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They did that during the week of august 20th. Since then, the common council has.

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Been considering their proposals for next year's budget talking about it and.

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Then and then we'll be voting, they will be voting on it september 26. That's this.

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Wednesday, for the first time october 10th, if you've been following.

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This process over the last few years, you'll see a difference in the way the.

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Process has has been going the way it looks and the way it's conceived from.

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Previous years, so there's been an evolution in the budget document and so.

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We thought it would be useful to showcase that, and also showcase the.

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Thinking that undergirds, that shift, and not only useful but also transparent,.

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Which is a big priority, mary hamilton, if there's one thing we hear around here,.

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It's your adage about how the budget is the primary policy document, so maybe you.

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Could share with us? Well sure, thank you ellen. It is a little.

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Trepidation scary, to have a budget in facebook life isn't it. I mean budgets.

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Are pretty dry often they're, very technical in many ways, but but they.

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Really are the most important single document where we as a community, decide.

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How to invest our resources, what our priorities are, how they change and as.

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You'll see, I think, talking today, we're also really trying to make this budget.

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Process and document evolve into something more accessible to people and.

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Accountable and transparent, so you know the budget allocates 150 million dollars.

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A year and it decides as the community what we're going to pay for and what.

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We're gonna buy and what priorities we have. So it's it's very important. It is.

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Pretty dry trying to get around was trying to get.

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Getting more accessible to people well, the budget itself might seem dry, but in.

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Fact what we're talking about is accomplishing huge things, so I think I.

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Think that's why we're doing this is trying to talk about the activities that.

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Underlie this document yeah, you know what god phrase I use is stealing from.

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Dr. seuss, I guess a little bit is that you know in government. I think one of.

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The things we're supposed to do is say what we will do that is outlined, what it.

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Is we intend to do that's in the budget and then do what we say do what we said.

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We'll do, and that goes to evaluating and measuring and reporting on what we've.

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Done so that's I'm a part of what we want to do today, too, is look at 2017.

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Back and what we did right and- and I think that talking about the.

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Transformation of the way we do this budget bears a little bit of explanation.

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And is actually pretty interesting, so so you you can speak to that transformation.

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Very with authority you were the longtime head of.

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The department of recreation and so you've you've seen that transformation.

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From in concept and in appearance of the weight goals, goals are established and.

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Right so as the parks and recreation director, in my experience, we used to.

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Start with doing a community survey and that committee survey was done once.

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Every five years it was statistically about and they kind of helped bring that.

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Next five-year cycle for what the most important things that our department.

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Parks at that time were charged to do based on community feedback and all of.

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Our departments now the new and, of course, have things that repeat.

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Annual we're gonna we're gonna ply streets every year. We're gonna do.

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Sidewalk repairs every year, we're gonna have certain programs that are repeated.

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And then there's always the new elements and the things that sometimes your.

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Community tells you that you might have thought about and I'll give you an.

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Example in parks, my first experience with our survey in 96 revealed that the.

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Number one thing that people in our community wanted were trails. It was not.

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An any of our way at all that a department instance. Thankfully we were.

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Smart enough to listen to our community and from that point sense trail.

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Construction connections have been the priority, the number-one priority out of.

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That every five years serving our hamilton was good enough to broaden and.

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The survey approach to doing it completely citywide, which had never been.

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Done before in my 38 years of municipal government experience to find out what.

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The community thought about how, in our first year in administrations whether or.

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Not we were doing the things that our community wanted us to do, so we did our.

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First, one in 2017 we'll talk about that a bit more so in.

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My evolution of doing budget development in parks, we come full circle back to.

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What we now call activity based budgeting and it's really looking at.

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What is it this is the service that you provide in each respective department.

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And how much time does that take how many resources that does that take both.

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Both people, human resources and pieces of equipment and supplies and all the.

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Things that are required to provide that service to the community and figuring.

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Out how many people utilize that? How many road miles you pay and the parts.

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You offer and how many people attend those events at parks or at the.

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Community family resources, events and so forth and seeing what we spend on those. So that's a real, transparent way of saying.

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Here's your public dollars at work. What are they doing? How many people are.

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Utilizing or benefiting from those services, so that's kind of a snapshot.

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Moving from more line by line budget, just as your so much we're going to.

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Spend to here's us we're going to spend an actual service. That's delivered and.

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You know what I might just dad, I think, there's an old phrase. I remember in.

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Government, where people used to say don't put a number and a date in the.

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Same sense, no you'll just get in trouble. If you do that, because you may not make.

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Well, that's a cynical way to think about them and it's the opposite. I think that.

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What government needs to do is say, here's what we intend to do by the way.

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Now we don't always get it done. The government's, not perfect government.

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Tries to do things sometimes they work. Sometimes they don't, but so one change.

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Was trying to be really clear about how many months street miles we wanted to.

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Get done how many, how many swimming lessons did we want to give? You know how.

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Many tracks tons of trash where we planted to pick up that and then.

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Similarly, to hold accountability to that, and then to make it really transparent.

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With this activity based budgeting say well how much you're going to spend.

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Offer those swimming lessons overall, how much you can spend each year compared to.

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Ice ice skating, lessons they're picking up trash how much you spend each year on.

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Those activities, rather than the bureaucratic structure we had before.

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Yeah, so it takes a certain amount of courage to put those numbers out and to.

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Acknowledge publicly that this is what our goal is and and then, furthermore, a.

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Year later to say and here's how far we got toward them right and that's what.

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We're doing now you know, since since I came in in 16 the.

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First budget we got to do with 17 and that's what we're now releasing today.

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They report about a hundred pages of goals from seventeen and how we did and.

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I would be the first one to say: look, this is a this is a work in progress.

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They weren't perfect, it was trying to walk and then run and first tilt getting.

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There, but to set out all these goals and then see how we did right, and I want to.

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Remind our viewers that you can see that document online. If you go to bloomington.

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I am gov slash city, slash budget, let's in just a moment we're going to talk.

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About some of the other tools, we've used to transform the way goals are set, but.

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If I could just summarize what we've said so far,.

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I guess nick and the mayor you've been talking about the way that goals started.

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Getting more specific and measurable, this idea of smart goals, so so I'm going.

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To let morgan are there spirit coordinator in the office well known as.

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The trello wizard and I talked about those smart goals are and I'll come back.

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And mention how we arrived at the goals that the public can now see online.

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Through a process called kijiji plan, yeah.

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So smart goals are goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic.

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And so basically that all just means that.

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They aren't just words, they are things that you can read even hold people.

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Accountable to those goals, so there was a because of a strategic planning.

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Initiative that was happening in 2016, so you have to came in. There was more of a.

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Formulation of the goals for each department, as I understand and then in.

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2017 with that budget things started to, or I should say for the 2018 budget, the.

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The metrics started to really come in and then for this year's budget. We.

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Implemented or we started using a new tool that morgan is also well-acquainted.

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With you may have heard nick call her the trello wizard. This is a project.

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Management software that we decided to implement to track progress even more.

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Effectively, maybe we could talk about trello yeah. I also like to go back to.

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The house critique planning led to the goal setting that we started with in the.

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First hamilton administration budget, which really wasn't until 17, so we.

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Inherited the 16 buy-in and then you craft, your next budget, so we met with.

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All the department heads and we just talked about what are the initiatives going on, that you have to repeat that are your basic core services and then.

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Determine what other things you like to do, based on the feedback you get from.

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The community, the survey was one of the tools we used. We had that document.

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And we created the 17 and 18 budget goals and then what else rather.

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Methodologies to our department heads use to find out critical path, issues.

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That our residents would like to see us do so. We did that in a series of.

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Strategic planning sessions that we hold third apartment heads and out of that.

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Came our first iteration of the goals that we set from the 17 budget process.

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When you see the report, we want your feedback, we know it's not perfect. As the.

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Mayor said, we think the 18 goals we set that better and now we're working on 19.

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They'll get even better yet and that's my experience says that's what happens.

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When you implement something new and is comprehensive of a change as it was, it's.

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Taken some time to bring everybody up to speed, some departments are going to.

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Naturally, have a little bit easier time having a metric driven goals because.

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They have activities that you can measure and then some of them a struggle.

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And that's what we've experienced in our process steps here so trello is really a.

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Software tool that the innovation director researched and found the way to.

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Use as a way to help manage it, you could use an excel spreadsheet. That's what we.

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Used to do in parse, but this tool, a little more dynamic, will show you a.

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Screenshot here in a second, it kind of gives you a sense for its robustness. The.

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Document you're seeing online if you go to the website and look at it, it's.

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Really good download an excel sheet out of the trello page and that's what you.

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Can see now on the screen, this is an actual tool of what it looks like.

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Actively updated by these 30 or the organization that are putting in.

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Real-Time updates, as things happen, it's a management tool. We can always think.

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About it as a ongoing to-do list and the each department is keeping track of you.

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Can check and see what other departments are doing and as you go along, you can.

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Track your progress, you can check out what you've done, and so the idea is that.

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Comes great news when it comes to budget time and you report out of this out of.

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This software into an excel spreadsheet. I think the goal is to really encourage.

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People to look at these goals that are set by the department, each agency and.

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Some of them collaborative goals and understand what they are and see how.

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We're doing on those and they arrange you know, there's a hundred pages of new.

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Bits is a lot, but if, if their areas that you're interested in you know, you may.

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Find that particularly feeling- but it's meant to these this budget is a priority.

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Document and these goals are what we're buying with the budget.

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Council to to articulate you know just using the parts example which we've done.

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Or maybe another would be the animal shelter and you know what let's look at.

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How many adoptions they're getting done and what's the euthanasia rate and how's.

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That changing and what's the goal of her was 2017 goal to do various things and.

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How did it go, and this really lets us look at that not only internally to help.

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Evaluate how we're doing but externally, for the public to be able to see. Oh well.

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That's what the animal shelter those are their key goals just last year. How did.

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They do exceeded some, they didn't and we you know we may be looking at some. It's.

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Always scary, when you're in the government to say what are some goals we didn't meet because that's well, somebody would say you didn't meet this goal so.

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You failed well, I think we have to avoid thinking about it. That way, we're never.

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Gonna, if we set goals that we meet every one of them, then we didn't set goals.

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That are hard enough together, and so you know we're gonna see some places where.

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We said: hey, I'm gonna, try this and it didn't quite happen yeah. So it involves.

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Us all stretching a little bit, but at the same time, sometimes when goals.

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Aren't met it's the indication of a larger trend of divorces that work, maybe.

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There's not as much demand for something and so, for example, you know people are.

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Using a different service, there's not as much demand for this particular service.

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And so in the next year's budget, you're gonna do some course correction. Well, you.

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Had that all the time in parks, right right of you, people would like this is.

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Worth more now than ten years ago, or vice versa, we call that a life cycle.

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Analysis you're, essentially looking at trends over time participation trends are people participating in team sports or.

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Individual sports, are they more inclined to do a formal activity or informal.

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Activity in trail use you monitor over time just to see what kind of activity.

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Level there is because that's where you know where the transfer moving up would.

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Be one of the best resources and the hard part for government is often to get.

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Out some things that you see the trend line going down but you're still.

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Spending the same amount of money- that's difficult, but over time, when you look at.

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It from this kind of with a lens like this you're, more likely to make the.

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Decisions based on whether the resources should be spent actually because you've.

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Always done it and you should be peated because you've always done it. So take a.

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Look at those life cycle trends are really important and trello the tool.

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Helps us manage that and again, if you're, just tuning in we're talking budget.

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Today, with mayor john hanson, debonair, administrative coordinator, morgan wells.

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And we're talking about a budget of course because we're in the midst of.

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This the approval process for the 2019 budget. We think this is an apt time to.

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Reflect on where we've come, the different ways that you're setting the.

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Budget now the different process we're using and and to show you how we've.

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Managed to achieve some of the goals through public spending.

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So we're showcasing a couple of documents one today and one I think, will.

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Be available tomorrow on our website, the 2017 budget goals and accomplishments is.

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On our website, currently you can you can track our progress at bloomington. I end.

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I go slash city, slash budget. This might be a good time to get a little granular.

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And look at some of those individual budgets how we do maybe we could start.

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With with the fire department, so much fun is terrible and you know I think.

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Morgan can also let us know what you're teeing that up. You know.

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Morgan's been helping, assemble this and would be fair to say that it's been a.

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Process of back-and-forth with the department heads not simple, it's kind of.

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New yeah yeah there are always difficulties.

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From you, you started using a new tool, but I think, as we move forward, people.

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Will really start to buy.

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It's accountable in a very transparent way, even though it's 100 pages scroll.

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Through especially the department's.

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Philosophically, to when you ask department, as in our case or any new.

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Organization out there that folks in the audience are affiliated with to do.

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Something different to do something that requires you to get into a document and.

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Keep it updated on a regular basis. That's a change in culture, fair, say that.

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The change in culture here's been met with some. You know some pushback, which.

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Is normally made about that, but we do think is really important. That's morgan.

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Mentioned about the accountability of this, and, quite frankly, once you start to.

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Use it as its intended, then you know better when to start making decisions in.

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Real time because you have it, tells you it's time to get out of that service or.

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To spend less on that service and and or there's something else, that's really.

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Emerging that we need to pay attention, so this had one interesting example to.

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Me, which is this bottom one with bread, can't read booze in the fire department.

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To test a hybrid service delivery model and what that's a bunch of words that.

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Really mean our fire department sends out most of what we respond to our.

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Medical calls where people are hurt, injured, fall, etc, and we send fire.

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Engines to those costs which are big and heavy and expensive, and we wanted to try.

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A hybrid service delivery model, which meant create an suv, basically a smaller.

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Vehicle that two firefighters can jump in get out as quickly to medical.

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Emergencies, when it's not a fire call and to try that out in 2017, was the.

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First year, they really did that, and this this is travel this. This report shows.

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That they had a 35 percent reduction in medical emergency response times with.

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That model you'll see an 18 that we're pursuing this model and and that anyway,.

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That was one particular goal in connection with emergency operations to.

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Try and this reports on that and if you're in the public and also lets you.

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See that if you're interested you can you know you can call up and say hey, I.

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Want to know more about that how's that working yeah and if you take a look at.

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That document on our website, you can see that we're using a few different terms.

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As far as evaluating the progress toward those goals for it for 2017 you'll be.

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Able to determine whether a bowl was accomplished. That's my favorite yeah. All.

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The rest, you can just ignore a couple that we indicate substantially.

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Accomplished that means accomplished by more than 50% of the goal. Not that means.

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That a budget goal was not met less than 50% stated. There aren't very many of.

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Those of course in progress is another term we're using.

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Working toward accomplishing that whole and inactive means that that goal is.

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Sort of like an ma.

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I do want to clarify in progress and inactive are only used for the 2018.

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Updates so after we published that tomorrow,.

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That's real start to see those status right. Does that mean 2018 we're going to.

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Show halfway through the year where we are, we didn't do that in 717. We're doing.

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Years over, it's clear the years over, so let's see see where we are on that and.

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Then 2018 we're going to do halfway through where we are, which helps.

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Everybody see see that might be helpful to know and we'll show an example of.

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This in a minute in the mayor's office budget that some projects or work.

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Products transcending one budget year ending up any one of the four string of.

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Pearls would be examples of that, so we'll show you in a second some of those.

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Examples but the switch art park obviously has had a horizon of a decade.

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Of war and we're fortunate enough that is being constructed and it will open.

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But it won't open until 2019, twenty-eight significant steps have been.

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Accomplished in 17, beginning through the design process, 18 to get had been.

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Construction, starting and 19 for completion, but there were steps before.

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That and after that, that will carry on to switch our parts timeline that.

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Transcend budget years into many many yeah pleasures, I envisioned, I think this.

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One shows that 17 we were supposed to get the design done and the.

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Specifications created in order to tee up for 18 to do the english, which we got.

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Done so that was, if we collectively and that was exciting to see, but some other.

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Examples we wanted well, you know some of our goals have to do with equipment.

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Others have to do with a lot of them have to do people just going back to the.

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Fire department budgeted the increasing firefighter safety by committing to osha.

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And national fire protection association compliance was a goal for 2017. That was.

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Accomplished- and we can see exactly how much was done- they did an audit made.

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Recommendations and identified violations and corrected.

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Eighteen budget, so those kinds of things too so increasing safety and compliance.

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And training human resources, maybe or would that be one to think one? One of.

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The things when I came in was was really looking at how we're doing developing.

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Our most important resource, which is our people under seven, our people and one of.

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The things we hadn't done was do performance evaluations in a regular way.

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And most of anybody, who's in a significant organization knows that you.

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Have to give performance feedback to people to help people improve all of us.

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Need that, and so one of the goals in 17 was to do annual performance evaluations.

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To begin that, which we hadn't done for quite a while I found, and so that was.

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Done in 2017 and accomplished and we've now you'll see it in eighteen and.

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Nineteen, because it's a way of life now for us, I think another important element.

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Noted the human resources document that you see before you is increasing overall.

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The organization see as a wholes commitment to training and developing.

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Staff, and so the mayor mentioned 2017 budget development process, I'd like.

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To see us try to get to one percent of the city's budget dedicated to.

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Developing professional development for all of the city staff to work all 700.

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Employees and many more seasonals that also are beneficial benefit from that.

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Kind of training, so that was another boulware set and accomplished in 2017 we.

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Started from half a percent, so we really doubled in. I think actually, this year up.

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To presenta and one and a half percent, so we've tripled it since so, since.

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Coming in that's a good thing anyway, just let's just track that make sure.

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We're doing what we say we do more than the more in the anecdotal way and some.

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Of these, schools have not only been that that really surpassed increased.

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Participation of our employees in our wellness program from 15 to 25 percent.

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Was one of the hr goals and it turns out over thirty percent of the employees.

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Participated and so it's it's really gratifying- to see that and really useful.

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We have this document and let me just make a comment. You know, morgan, you said.

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Smart goals: they need to be the right goals because we have to take the right.

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Holes and that's a place where obviously city council, but the public too, can.

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Weigh in and say I don't, I don't think, that's the right goal. I think you ought.

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To measure it this way or look at this and that's this is a constantly evolving.

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Thing and getting feedback from people, many of whom are experienced with these.

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Kinds of goal setting can be helpful to us. It's always scary, for government to.

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Do it because we're public- and you know we do something wrong- people will.

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Criticize, which is perfectly appropriate, but that's how we get better and so.

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Encouraging people to look and see what you think of these goals and see how.

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They ought to be because they're gonna change every year.

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Again, that's bloomington / city / budget, and we do have a few mechanisms that.

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We've mentioned already to incorporate that public input. We have the city.

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Survey that happened in 2017 and again in 2019 this year, there's another.

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Interesting aspect in the proposed 2019 budget mayor having to do with.

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Participatory budgeting, so that's where segments of our residents will actually.

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Get to make a determination about public spending good. Maybe you talked about.

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That sure, so this is an idea. That's been used around the country in various.

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Places it's kind of like direct democracy. It's like pushing some money.

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Out directly to the people, if you will, either by neighborhood or other groups,.

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To say, here's some money: how do you want to spend and obviously most of the.

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Budget isn't done that way. We have elected people and the council reviews.

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It and we do it, but but this is proven effective in some places to engage.

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People in different ways- and we proposed it in a 17 budget for neighborhood based.

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Participatory budgeting, we didn't get any takers from from council.

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Representatives so this year and really patterned after boston, which has done.

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This in a great way, we've proposed a piece, a small piece of the budget for.

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Youth kind of maybe junior high to high school-aged youth to have a slice of the.

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Budget and say what do you think we should do with this money in the city.

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And have a process by which they can allocate a modest amount of money. Ten.

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Thousand twenty-five dollars for projects that they think are.

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Important, it helps allocate money but, more importantly, probably it helps.

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People grab all the government realize this belongs to us. It belongs to me. I.

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Can be part of this, it increases voting participation and increases from from.

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Evidence of other places so so I hope you'll turn that out. So if you're gonna.

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Out there, between junior high and high school in florida, just to investing a.

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Little of the city money next year, we all well, we do have input direct input.

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Right now from someone who's watching, and so this is a question that comes up.

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From time to time has to do with consultants, sometimes people wonder why.

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We use consultants, so joel is wondering why we continue to spend money on.

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Outside consultants, who give us the share of information, we already have on.

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Hand and joel chastises us saying you need to be better stewards of our tax.

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Dollars so I'll give a grass is a good question and others may jump in nobody. I.

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Think has a as a fundamental goal of let's use more consultants, city.

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Government does a lot of things regularly, but consultants are often.

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Brought in for a couple reasons, one because we have a big bump of activity.

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That's going to be temporarily sort lived, a short period of time and if we.

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Hire permanent people to do that, we'd have to lay them off or get rid of them.

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For that projects done so some of it is you need to expand your efforts for.

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Example, you know we're gonna, we're gonna be doing switch art park and we need.

B

Help designing that! Well, we don't design a 30-plus million dollar park every year.

B

Another reason would be because it's a special expertise that we don't have on.

B

Staff- and we need to bring that in an example, would be. We need to inspect a.

B

Garage for engineering issues and we want the experts we want somebody who.

B

Really knows garages an expert in that to come in and help us see, but it's.

B

Always a good question to evaluate that when we look at it every day, I think.

C

America's some great examples of others would be the time sensitivity of a.

C

Particular project- maybe we may have the skill set, but not the bandwidth- to get.

C

That project accomplished or that piece of work for a project accomplished in.

C

The timeframe we have it, so you supplement your staff with that outside.

C

Expertise to accelerate it's often the reason that you hire a consultant. I get.

C

That people sometimes think you already know this and you just having somebody.

C

From the outside, tell you something you already know, my experience tells me.

C

That's not always the case. Sometimes those consultants kind of tell you what.

C

Your staff told you already, but most of the time it's it's not the reason that.

C

You hire the consultant to begin with. You know another example. We did recently.

B

Was a salary study where we hadn't we hadn't looked at our salaries compared.

B

To the rest of the midwest, for some time we didn't have the bandwidth to do that.

B

And also there are people who that's their job, they've done, that they have.

B

All the data and they can compose or run the city survey now maybe one day we'll.

B

Do that right now, I'm bringing those people in.

B

Anyway, it's a good question. It's a very small piece of the city budget that gets.

B

You some consultants, but it's always good to value. So, let's see joel has one.

A

More question and we're interested in your input.

A

He claims that we continue. We ignore public input and uses this example.

A

Saying a high percentage of us did not want the tax increase for a convention.

A

Center, yet our elected officials ignored us and pushed it through well. Thank you.

B

Joel, I think that is the way democracy works. That was a vote of the county.

B

Council, I don't know that a high percentage opposed it for a long time.

B

People have been interested in looking at how financing expansion of the.

B

Convention center yeah, we are, we are a very unusual city in our makeup that we.

B

Did not have a food and beverage tax like many places around the state and in.

B

The region to do that, but ultimately that is a code of democratically elected.

B

Representatives who voted to put that in place, I don't think they ignored input.

B

They just may not have agreed with you joel, but they agree with others and keep.

A

That input coming it's important. It's an important piece thinking that we can.

A

Talk about the parks budget, 2017 that shows.

A

A lot of interesting things- and you know it's it's a very metrics driven put it.

A

That way, I in terms of pools and lessons and that sort of thing this is your area.

C

Of expertise, so maybe even guy level point folks to the aquatic goals in this.

C

Particular slide and it talks about how many patrons would like to see.

C

Participate in swimming activities at our two pools brian park and mills pool.

C

And while the goal was 55,000 and brian 21,000, it fills if it was not quite.

C

Obtained now that could be for a variety of factors, whether it really is the main.

C

One, if the pools closed, that you're gonna have loss will never get that day.

C

Back as they say from an airplane, takes off, you'll never get those seats back.

C

Its lost revenue and for the aquatics division it could have been weather.

C

Driven that they didn't attain those numbers, but they got close and that's an.

C

Example of using the term substantially accomplished what you reached more than.

C

50 percent of your goal versus some of the others, where the private rentals at.

C

The pool that exceeded the goal of 30, it was 32, so that goal was accomplished and.

C

Again, this department does have a long history of using metric driven goals.

C

It's a big reason why they use the life cycle analysis. If I have thought of this.

C

Example earlier when the mayor asked the good one is adult softball participation.

C

In its heyday in the 90s, there were 5,000 players and 400 teams playing.

C

Adult softball today there's less than 200 teams and about two.

C

Thousand players, so that just means you shift your resource allocations of other.

C

Things, what has trendy you soccer has gone.

C

Participatory sport, girls basket, softball has gone and other things have.

C

Displaced that particular activity in the park staff has adjusted resource.

C

Allocation accordingly, so that's how these are really helpful in utilizing.

C

The data to shift where you spend your attention and obviously this shows one.

B

Year but we care a lot about those trends. As you talked about, you know,.

B

There are 39,000 patrons at bryant park, pool house that trended over the last.

B

Five years, where do we see going? How do we want to respond to that, but there's a.

B

Lot a lot of detail in this, and this helps helps you see. It also helps you.

A

See how much are we spending with the activity based budgeting? Well, how much.

B

If you have this many softball players, what's the budget for softball and.

B

Compare that to soccer to ice hockey to swim, lessons, etc. That's right and we'll.

C

Get in as we continue our budget development process into the next cycle,.

C

We'd be on 90 in the 2020 that'll be the next iteration is really getting down.

C

Into the, how much is it costing per experienced participation per lane mile.

C

Per ton of trash be picked up to try to measure those over time, build a baseline.

C

Data and then make hopefully smart decisions about how to allocate.

C

Resources in the future. Well, if I'm reading this document accurately, it.

A

Looks like ice skating is really on the rise here, including all the skating.

A

Goals for 2017, where we're surpassed it looks like.

A

Group skating lessons to over 600 participants. That was the goal we.

A

Achieved 6:17 now this is quite an impressive, surpassing of goal. The goal.

A

Is to make available public skating for community members for at least 300 hours.

D

Seasonally we had 525 hours of public sessions, so I think if I were a.

A

Sociologist, I would have something to say about ice skating in south-central.

A

A

Nonetheless- and we tried to make it pretty simple: color coding, green beans.

B

Good accomplished, yellow means, substantial accomplishment, pink means it.

B

Wasn't matter and then it helps us look at it, helps the public, see it easily and.

B

Quickly and again you know I, the budgets can be dry and detailed and deep and and.

B

Sleep-Inducing, sometimes when you try to go there, but we hope go into them. We.

B

Hope hope this helps people dig in and really encourage you to look at this and.

B

Find areas that are interesting to you, you have comments. We welcome them to.

B

City council, we hope we'll review this as well, might be helpful to tell the.

C

Public about the sort of budget basic development timeframe is quite intensive.

C

Back in march, given year of the city, is on a calendar year.

C

31, so in march, just three months into a new year, you're budgeting for the next.

C

Year, you begin the process, we don't really get revenue. Estimates from the.

C

State, which is the entity that tells us about property, tax revenues, local income.

C

Tax revenues: we estimate our own revenues from certain services. We.

C

Provide you really don't get that until july. So a lot of this goal-setting.

C

Process and is the very beginning stage of that. Looking back at trends looking.

C

At data we have and then starting to write goals for the next year through.

C

Our strategic plan, abuse of our surveys by august, were presented to the council.

C

So we've had to take all the 15 or so departments numbers that they've sent in.

C

To us- and we have to do the harsh reality they asked for this- it's always.

C

Important we have and we have to find where the priorities aren't again. The.

C

Public drives a lot of the priorities with where we're going to spend our dollars. Of course, we repeat things every year are always going to do some of.

C

Those things but then there's discretionary new project, new money.

C

Opportunities, maybe not new money, but new priorities that are set by the.

C

Administration with feedback from the public, all that gets put into the.

C

Washing machine of budget development and the mayor has presented to the.

C

Council that council has to approve multiple hours presentations if you've.

C

Watched any of them 5 and 6 hours a night.

C

I lead to the post presentation discussions about things that the.

C

Council might ask where we are that process right now will present those.

C

Changes to the budget on wednesday night in 26th and then the council will have.

C

Two more weeks before they take their final on october 10, then it goes to the.

C

State department of local government finance and they have to sign off and.

C

Make sure that everything we said in revenue matches up to what we're going.

C

To expend on a budget into the red, so all those steps take six to eight months.

C

Before and the new budget year actually starts, which is january 1 for this.

C

Particular budget cycle, my team, we're noting we do pass a budget on time.

B

Unlike some of our governments- and we do have a balanced budget, unlike some.

B

Governments and a healthy reserve and healthy reserve so anyway, I know we.

B

Don't have a lot of time, I don't see where we wrap it up. We apologize for.

A

Technical difficulties yeah and it's important to reiterate that yeah we're.

A

Talking about the 2017 budget and which has obviously been resolved, we're in the.

A

Process of approving the 2019 budget, but everyone comes in and participates.

A

Wednesday, listen to that those deliberations- men october 10th- that will.

A

Be fine will be the final vote on the 2019, but so we thought it would be.

A

Instructive at this juncture to reflect on where.

A

From and to see, okay, how are we setting rules now, how's differently? What have we.

A

Learned from the past, and and we wanted to share that with you- so go ahead and.

A

Check out the 2017 budget goals and accomplishments that document available.

A

To you, the same document we're looking at right here at bloomington and slash.

A

City, slash budgeted by tomorrow, we should have 2018 format. You see this.

C

Going to be online is just a summary all that's in the actual management tool.

C

Called trello that's way more robust. It has a lot more of checklists and days.

C

Time use for management really is. This is just so nice. Well, that's not.

A

Very robust, you really have an impressive that remember. This is just a.

C

Downloadable piece nexus, an opposite sort of crystallizes. What what's been.

D

Accomplished so far, what hasn't been as well right, so that process you were.

A

Talking about earlier that it starts way back in the beginning of the year. That's.

A

All happening in trello this is the report basically yeah, so we.

A

Hope that folks are still listening and and then you haven't actually taken your.

A

Midday siesta during this conversation, we know that budget, sometimes even the.

A

Word can be kind of dawn inducing, but underneath it is this really interesting.

A

Discussion of city activities there's a reason why we're having this discussion.

A

Today, mara again speaks to your values and your goals prints. Well, I appreciate.

B

Everybody's attention, knowing what your money is being spent on and how well.

B

It's being used is important to you, it's important to me. I want to say how proud.

B

I am of the 700 employees, who are doing all this work and getting this done. It's.

B

Kind of putting them out there too, to see well how they do on paving streets.

B

And filling potholes and good animals adopted, and you know giving swim lessons.

B

And all the things we do every day, responding to emergencies and all that.

B

Stuff- and I want you to thank them, if you can of to when you see a city.

B

Employee for all their work on our behalf and- and I think this.

B

Accountability, I said I want to open the door here. I think this is a. This is a big opening of the doors about. What's going.

B

On the government's, I hope, you'll enjoy, give us feedback. Well, thanks for joining.

A

Us today you can catch this conversation. It will be archived on our facebook page.

A

And again, budget documents are at bloomington. I am gov slash city, slash.

A

Budget, I'm yael cassandra disease communications director, along with.

A

Morgan wells, an administrative coordinator, deputy mayor monroe, niacin.

A

And bloomington mayor john hamilton thanks so much.