The City of Glendale's budget liaison program.

• Author: McClendon, Charles
• Position: Arizona

"Budget volunteers contribute more than 2,000 hours per fiscal year to the budget process while gaining valuable new skills to enhance their careers and helping upgrade budgetary procedures in their home departments.

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."

--Theodore Roosevelt

Local governments throughout the United States and Canada have begun to recognize the value of cultivating an active volunteer program within their community. Cities are progressively utilizing unpaid volunteers to assist in a number of significant capacities. In the City of Glendale, Arizona, the concept of volunteerism has been taken a step further: through its Budget Liaison Program, the city offers interested city employees an opportunity to volunteer their time and expertise in the city's annual budget preparation process. The volunteers, as well as the city, benefit from this experience, gaining an insider's view of the organization's decision-making process, developing new management skills, and receiving the opportunity to demonstrate their abilities from outside the confines of their own departments.

Necessity Is the Mother of Invention

The Budget Liaison Program was initially formed out of necessity. Prior to the 1970s, Glendale was a small, agriculture-based community. Located 10 miles west of Phoenix, its growth rate since 1970 has been very rapid, dramatically outpacing other communities throughout the state. Between 1985 and 1995 its population doubled. With its 175,000 citizens, an expanding commercial base in technology and telecommunications, and the recent annexation of Luke Air Force Base, Glendale is now the fourth largest city in the state and the fourteenth fastest growing city in the nation.

Most of this growth in Glendale has occurred in newer, undeveloped areas of the city that require major financial investments to create the infrastructure needed to support mushrooming residential and commercial service demands. In the early 1990s, the Glendale city government was feeling the effects of the protracted economic recession that plagued cities throughout the southwest. The combination of low revenue growth and increasing service demands placed a significant financial strain on the city.

To resolve short-term budget deficits and to insure its continued financial stability, the city council and city manager undertook a long, hard review of existing staff levels. For the first time in its history, the city made the difficult decision to downsize. To avoid any future fiscal problems, the...