Question

Julio is the new Finance Director of a large, urban city in the Midwest. As a graduate of a MPA program, possessing over 20 years of experience in municipal public finance, he is both educated and experienced. He has held progressively more sophisticated and important positions in a number of similar municipal agencies and has always been bothered by the lack of citizen participation in the local budgeting process. He feels as most of his peers in similar roles in government do not value and have not sufficiently solicited citizen feedback in the important budgetary and financial affairs of their respective cities. Even though complex in nature, Julio desires to substantively engage and involve citizens in the decision making and resource allocation process. However, he has struggled with 1) explaining and communicating this technical information in an understandable way, 2) engaging citizens in a manner that is convenient to them, 3) synthesizing and integrating their feedback, 4) utilizing that feedback and information to justify and inform his decisions and the decisions of his large agency, and 5) articulating to his boss—the mayor—why this feedback and plan is important to his and the mayor’s success. How should Julio proceed to address these issues? What should be his basic plan? How can he better engage and involve citizens in the budgeting and financial management process of his city to produce better outcomes and results? Be creative, specific, and realistic and address the above questions in no fewer than 500 words.

Answer 1

Budgeting is the process by which the amount of money that will be spend by the municipality will be determined beforehand. It is forward looking activity. In this process, the inclusion of the opinion of the citizens should be given importance. The citizens would have a clear idea about the things that need modification in their area. The list of things that need to be focussed on in terms of expenditure of money can be obtained through discussions with citizens. The citizens can however not be able to give the details about the money that needs to be spent on each area. So, that has to be done by the officials. Once the information from the citizens ia obtained then the team in the municipality can sit together and transform the information in terms of money. An estimation of the amount that might be needed by them to fulfill these demands should be prepared. The tentative budget that is prepared can be shown to the higher authorities. They can be convinced by stating the fact that the citizens will be happy if their needs are fulfilled. They will be happy with the government and they may vote them back to power. The mayor should be convinced by this. The tentative budget can be modified based on inputs from the mayor and other members of the municipality. The final budget can be a mixture of the citizen's feedback and other inputs.