Engaging citizens in the bottom line

Many citizens view the contents of local government budgets as bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo with little relationship to their vital interests. And that is no great wonder, since city and county officials often see the creation of budgets as a dreary technical process.

The problem is that local governments do not see the annual budget process as an opportunity to engage citizens in setting community priorities and create public support for difficult budget decisions.

Building support for those decisions is essentially a marketing challenge. It entails identifying citizens’ needs, desires, values and dreams and responding with a budget that clearly reflects those things.

To successfully market a budget, a local government must move from monologue to dialogue. That means including the public in the budget process before the actual document is formally adopted.

Some local government leaders recognize the need to go beyond budget hearings and involve citizens in the budget process. However, when they talk about better marketing the budget, the emphasis is usually on informing and educating the public. Officials often try to demystify the budget process by providing budget classes, citizen guides and budget presentations to neighborhood groups.

But these efforts are based on a faulty premise: If only those in government could better inform people, the people would support subsequent budget decisions.

That is not necessarily the case. As opposed to telling-and-selling, truly engaging citizens in the budget process means listening to people and responding to them.

When asked what they love about their communities, people of differing ideologies usually come up with nearly identical or complementary value responses. A discussion about values can provide common ground for people to begin dealing with issues among themselves and with government officials as neighbors, not enemies. Focusing on citizens’ values and visions is a way to shift the emphasis from department needs to citizen perspectives.

Indeed, some local governments have used creative approaches to elicit value statements and priorities from their citizens. For example: * Arlington, Texas, distributed a “Budget Ballot” to all residents; * Battle Creek, Mich., used volunteer “community connectors” to organize dialogues on the city budget; * Sacramento, Calif., conducted simulated city council discussions in which citizens attempted to balance the budget; and * Fort Worth, Texas, distributed a computerized budget-balancing simulation program on diskette to interested citizens.

To be successful in engaging citizens, local governments must take two steps. First, they must meaningfully use the values and concerns of people to develop specific budget proposals.

Second, they must report back to citizens, summarizing the information gathered and detailing how the input has been used.

In an environment of distrust, local governments may be able to continue delivering services, but they will be unable in the final analysis to govern effectively. The problems facing local governments are difficult to solve, emotion-laden and often divisive. Controversy is bound to arise as local governments struggle to respond to crime, deteriorating infrastructure and countless other challenges.

In this environment, communication, marketing and citizen participation are essential in making tough funding choices and generating political support for solutions. Certainly, it is risky to truly open up and engage people in the budget process. But it is even more risky not to.