And thus begins our noble quest into the depths of the city budget for the current fiscal year.

We’ll start with the budget priorities for the City Commission and City Manager’s Office and then in coming days move on to the  various other departments.   Each city department took a slightly different approaches to their “narrative”, with some working in paragraphs others in bullets.  For the sake of lazy blog-reading, I’m going to convert the paragraph narratives into bullet points, retaining as much of the original text as possible.

From pages 7-9 of the “narrative” section of the 09-10 budget.

The City Commission’s budget priorities include…

• Funding for a facilitated strategic visioning session for the City Commission and members of all volunteer Boards and Commissions.

The City Manager’s Office budget priorities include…

• priority funding for a third citizen satisfaction survey and for participation in the Center for Performance Measurement
• [continued oversight of] the  development  and  construction  of  projects  included  in  the  capital  bond  program.
• the incorporation of electronic media strategies to increase the opportunities for information and communication exchange between the City of Decatur and its residents, business owners and visitors. [editor's note: I believe a website revamp is a big part of this]
• implementation of a severe weather warning system including CodeRed Weather Warning and the installation of four severe weather sirens additional training and development for all response team staff and management team members through scenario planning and drills.

Tomorrow, the Community and Economic Development Department!

A new story in the Georgia Municipal Authority’s questionably titled “Breaking News” section details Decatur’s new “narrative” approach to the city budget. [h/t: InDecatur]

This year, instead of just dumping a bunch of numbers on a couple reams of paper, Decatur’s many departments went to the effort of creating a “narrative” version of the budget, which not only makes for easier reading but also helps give all those line items a bit more context.

Yet, even after creating this more reader-friendly budget, there were still reports of very low resident turnout at the June budget meetings.  And that can only mean one of two things.  One. Everyone is completely satisfied with and clear about the city’s 09-10 budget and goals.  Or Two. That even after this extra effort was taken, virtually no one (myself included) read the full document and then followed up at the meeting.

I’m going to assume the latter and take some emergency, redemptive steps to remedy this potential lapse in citizen responsibility.  Starting tomorrow, DM will feature daily posts that highlight one city department’s budget priorities for the upcoming year.

Sound boring?  Actually, it’s pretty interesting, if, like me,  you’re interested in the projects the city will spend money on in this coming fiscal year.  So stay tuned.

Decatur Metro: Having fun with the city budget since 2009.