Provo brings employees and citizens together to identify budget cuts: recommendations from teams of employees and citizens helped the City of Provo make surgical cuts that balanced the budget during these difficult economic times.

• Author: Borget, John
• Position: Best Practices

The City of Provo, Utah, has ken a unique approach to its budget process this year--a team approach that uses partnerships between employees and residents. Given the fiscal challenges the city was facing when its new mayor was elected in November 2009, he wanted to get a head start on the budgeting process for the coming fiscal year. The mayor was a newcomer to the public sector, coming from a private business and entrepreneurial background. He gathered together some of the brightest financial minds in Provo to serve as another set of eyes and ears and to provide input on how to prepare a budget in these difficult economic times.

Provo, a city of 120,000 residents in the heart of the Intermountain West, has a young, dynamic population. It is home to Brigham Young University, which has 35,000 students, and to many of the students at nearby Utah Valley University, with 23,000 students. Provo also has a strong and vibrant business community, and has been recognized as one of the most business-friendly cities in the United States.

But even with a robust local economy and a rapidly growing metropolitan area, Provo has been subject to the challenges of the current global recession. Like most cities in Utah, the city government's general fund revenue is largely dependent on sales tax and other revenues that are similarly reactive to the economy. During the boom years of the first decade of the 21st century, Provo's governmental services expanded, and the city funded a number of improvements in the quality of life of its citizens, including a new performing arts center, improvements to the city's aquatic center, new parks, and expanded police protection. So the city found itself in mid to late 2009 with increased demand for resources in an era of dramatically declining revenues.

DEVELOPING A RECOMMENDATION

Before taking office, the mayor-elect decided to form a Citizens Advisory Committee that would include bankers, budget officers, chief financial officers, a former council member, and certified public accountants, all of whom brought important and needed skill sets to the table. During the transition period between the election and the inauguration, members of this committee met weekly in the early morning hours, along with the city's finance team, to educate committee members about the city's financial status. This included updates on revenues, expenditures, employee compensation and benefits, budgeted expenditures, previous city budget...