I am unaware of any city’s governing body that is more transparent than ours. Beginning tn the late summer of each year the City Council meets in open session with a facilitator over three days to establish our goals and priorities for the coming fiscal year. It is a grueling process where many great ideas don’t float to the top and are discarded. It is also a very gratifying process as we emerge with 10 high priorities for staff to focus their attention and resources on.
Throughout the next several months Department Directors work with the new goals and priorities in mind to present proposals to the City Manager to address the goals and priorities. These proposals make it into the City Manager’s proposed budget for the next year. The City Manager may or may not recommend each individual proposal in his budget. He also must make a recommendation for the amount of financial resources needed to support the items he is recommending .
The City Council is required by law to hold a special meeting at the beginning of the budget process to adopt the maximum tax rate that the new budget will require. Throughout the budget process the rate can then be lowered, but not increased.
Next comes another special meeting where the proposed budget is presented to the City Council in some detail, including revenue sources for the expenses proposed.
At this point the staff work is mostly complete and the work load falls on the Council. Our City Council holds seven public meetings where the budget proposals are broken down department by department and improvement levels are scrutinized by the Council and the public. Public comment is sought on each department’s presentation. These meetings typically can run for or five hours long.
Finally another special public hearing is held where the budget is formally adopted by the City Council.
The Council and Citizens have now been told the “whole story,” of what the departments are trying to do, what money they expect to spend and where it comes from.
City staff has innumerable hours in all of this. The City Council has lots of hours reading and interpreting the information we receive before each of these meetings (It is all public as well). The time spent by the Council in open public session to create and adopt the budget is enumerated below:
Goal Setting Sessions: 15 hours; Special session to Set the Tax Rate: 2 hours; Special Session for presentation of the proposed budget to the City Council: 3 hours; Departmental Budget Hearings (7): 28 hours; Final Public Hearing to adopt the budget: 2 hours.
By the time the Mayor’s gavel goes down adopting the budget for the City of Dubuque’s upcoming fiscal year your City Council Members have each spend almost 50 hours in open public meetings and hundreds of hours studying public documents preparing for these meetings. I cannot imagine a more transparent process.
The Telegraph Herald has a reporter sit through every minute of these meetings to report on the content. All media and all citizens are always welcome. Most of these meetings are televised live and are archived on the City’s website for review at any time.
Most cities have a meeting where the budget is presented to the Council and a public hearing to adopt the budget. We have the most transparent process that I can imagine.
I am proud of our team and the way we do business!