TYLER TECHNOLOGIES
Priority Based Budgeting
for the City of National City, California
Presented to the City Council
Chris Fabian · Creator of Priority Based Budgeting
Senior Director, Product Strategy · Tyler Technologies
August 18, 2026
BEFORE WE START
What Priority Based Budgeting is, and how it came to be Priority Based Budgeting is a way of building a budget around the services a city provides, rather than the accounts it spends from — so leaders can see what each service costs, who depends on it, and how well it matches what the community says matters.
THE METHOD
2008 Invented inside a working county government — Jefferson County, Colorado — not in a consulting study.
2011 ICMA named it a Leading Practice for government management, three years after it appeared.
2011–2026 Became central to national budget guidance through GFOA, including its Rethinking Budgeting initiative.
Today In use by more than 300 governments and school systems across 30-plus states and Canada.
WHO IS ASKING
Chris Fabian
Creator of Priority Based Budgeting
Senior Director, Product Strategy
Tyler Technologies · Denver, Colorado
I built the method in 2008, co-founded the Center for Priority Based Budgeting to formalize it, started the software company that scaled it, and have led it at Tyler since 2023.
I have taught it to city and county managers at every ICMA annual conference since 2009 and every GFOA conference since 2008.
PBB AS A NATIONAL BEST PRACTICE
ICMA
Named a Leading Practice for government
management.
GFOA
Co-author of its defining white paper on the
method.
S&P · Moody’s · Fitch
All three have cited a government’s use of
PBB as evidence of strong financial
management.
Harvard Kennedy School
Studied in academic and policy research.
Tyler Technologies · Priority Based Budgeting Chris Fabian · August 18, 2026
WHERE YOU ARE
The gap is real,
We understand and PBB can help
$12.7M
this year’s gap
$800K
all the reserve you have left
Two options are usually on the table. Cut services, or raise taxes.
We are here about a third option, leveraged through PBB — and it does not require anything you do not already have.
Tyler Technologies · Priority Based Budgeting Chris Fabian · August 18, 2026
FIRST, WHAT WE ACTUALLY DO
We turn your budget into a list of the things you do.
WHAT YOUR BUDGET SHOWS NOW
Public Works Dept. $14.2M
Salaries $8.1M
Supplies $1.4M
Contracts $3.9M
Equipment $0.8M
You see what was bought.
Not what it does.
→
THE SAME MONEY, AS PROGRAMS
Street Sweeping $582K
Sidewalk Repair $310K
Traffic Signals $744K
Fleet Maintenance $1.9M
Storm Drain Cleaning $465K
Each one is a program.
You have 178.
→
AND THIS IS WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT EACH ONE
Street Sweeping Services
What it costs $581,963
What it brings in $0
Staff 2.45 people
Paid for by 4 different funds
Priority score 79 of 100
Required by law Yes — stormwater
Steps in the work 7 identified
Compared against 772 peer programs
Options found 6 with dollar figures
None of this existed before. All of it came from your own budget file.
A program is simply a service you provide. Nothing is added and nothing is invented — your same dollars, arranged so you can see the work.
Tyler Technologies · Priority Based Budgeting Chris Fabian · August 18, 2026
WHAT THE DETAILS MAKE VISIBLE
The periodic table of public programs.
Four yes-or-no questions about any program produce sixteen positions — the complete set. Every program in every government sits in exactly one, and its position tells you which kind of move is available.
LOW MANDATE
LOW RELIANCE
LOW MANDATE
HIGH RELIANCE
HIGH MANDATE
LOW RELIANCE
HIGH MANDATE
HIGH RELIANCE
LOW IMPACT
LOW COST
LOW IMPACT
HIGH COST
HIGH IMPACT
LOW COST
HIGH IMPACT
HIGH COST
1 Optimize or exit 2 Shift the funding 3 Minimum compliance 4 Protect and tune 5 Optimize or exit 6 Shift the funding 7 Minimum compliance 8 Protect and tune 9 Grow it 10 Protect and tune 11 Grow it 12 Protect and invest 13 Rescope it 14 Shift the funding 15 Minimum compliance 16 Protect and invest Only two of the sixteen point toward doing less. The other fourteen point toward funding it another way, sharing it, resizing it, protecting it, or growing it.
No seventeenth position exists without a fifth question. That is what makes it a framework and not a preference.
Tyler Technologies · Priority Based Budgeting Chris Fabian · August 18, 2026
WHAT SITS BETWEEN YOUR TWO DOORS
There is a third path, and you control all of it.
CUT IT
Drastic.
Painful.
Permanent.
TAX IT
Slow.
May fail at
the ballot.
EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN
· Share it with a neighbor · Charge the users · Find a grant · Get a sponsor · Fund it from a utility · Do it with fewer steps · Run it with a partner · Reprice it · Consolidate it · Automate part of it · Redesign it · Contract part of it These are the moves you can make on your own. No ballot measure. No service disappears.
Every one of those six street-sweeping results came from the middle box. Not one required a cut or a tax increase.
You have been choosing between the two boxes on the ends. Nobody has ever shown you the middle one.
Tyler Technologies · Priority Based Budgeting Chris Fabian · August 18, 2026
THE IDEA THE WHOLE METHOD RESTS ON
Every program has more than one future.
Take street sweeping. Most cities pay for it out of the general fund and assume that is simply how it is done. Six other cities did not. $225K saved
Fridley, MN
Kept a core crew, hired contractors only at peak.
28–33% saved
San Diego, CA
Enforced no-parking rules so fewer passes were needed.
10–15% saved
Mankato, MN
Longer truck replacement cycles, smarter routes.
$850K offset
Bloomington, MN
Commercial owners pay for extra sweeping.
$25–50K earned
Sacramento, CA
Local businesses sponsor routes.
Off the GF
Portland, OR
Funded by the water utility — sweeping keeps storm
drains clear.
Same service. Six different ways to pay for it. None of them a cut. None of them a tax increase.
Tyler Technologies · Priority Based Budgeting Chris Fabian · August 18, 2026
AND HERE IS THE PART THAT SHOULD ENCOURAGE YOU
You have already done this. Four times, on the record.
Every one of these is in a signed agreement or an adopted resolution. Not one of them required a service cut or a ballot measure.
FUND IT FROM A RATE BASE
Street sweeping
$0
General Fund payroll
Both Street Sweeper Operator positions are
budgeted entirely in the Refuse Enterprise
Fund 172, which runs on trash rates. The
replacement sweeper is split 71% Sewer / 29%
Refuse, because sweeping keeps storm drains
clear.
FY2026 Adopted Budget, Authorized Positions by Fund ·
FY2026 CIP
SHARE IT WITH A NEIGHBOR
Animal sheltering
$41,638
per month, paid to Chula Vista
National City has not run its own shelter since
1987. Chula Vista runs it at 130 Beyer Way.
Payments drop by any redemption fees
collected, fall 15% if the city staffs one officer,
and future pricing is capped at ±5% a year
against a rolling three-year intake average.
Chula Vista Agreement No. 2024-2501, effective July 1,
2024
CHARGE THE BENEFICIARY
Police and fire on
Port tidelands
$1,310,324
per year, paid by the Port District
The San Diego Unified Port District pays the
city to protect tidelands inside city limits that
generate no property tax. The rate is tied to
“the actual documented costs of providing the
Services” and tested by performance audit,
with baseline resets in 2022 and 2025.
Port District agreement, July 1, 2021 through June 30,
2030
FIND A GRANT
Right-of-way cleanup
$600,000
from Caltrans, against $175K city match
Clean California funding for litter abatement
and beautification on locally owned right-ofway — nearly four dollars of outside money for every one of yours, and it builds workforce
pathways for people facing barriers to
employment at the same time.
Resolution 2026-33, adopted April 14, 2026
Each of those was worked out once, on its own — a shelter to run, a shoreline to patrol, a grant that opened. It can prove to be a programmatic method.
Four different moves from the middle box, already made. What has been missing is a way to ask the same question of everything else.
Tyler Technologies · Priority Based Budgeting Chris Fabian · August 18, 2026
THE SAME BREAKTHROUGH, THREE TIMES BEFORE
Find the real unit. Describe it well. The pattern appears.
THE UNIT
what you count
THE DETAILS
what you write down
THE BREAKTHROUGH
what it made possible
CHEMISTRY
The element
Its weight, and how it behaves
with other elements.
Arranged by those two details,
the elements fell into a table —
and the empty spaces predicted
elements nobody had found yet.
MEDICINE
The gene
What each one does, and
where in the body it does it.
The genome by itself was three
billion letters. Once every gene
had a description, one person
could be compared to millions.
BASEBALL
The player
Which actions on the field
actually produce runs.
The walk was always in the box
score. Nobody counted it. Once
they did, a low-payroll team
started winning like a rich one.
YOUR BUDGET
The program
Cost, revenue, staff, who relies
on it, whether the law requires
it, and how much it moves the
needle.
Every program lands in one of
sixteen positions — and the
position tells you the play. Most
impact, least resource.
Nobody invented new chemistry, new biology, or new baseball. They found the right thing to count, wrote down what mattered about it, and the answers were already sitting there.
Tyler Technologies · Priority Based Budgeting Chris Fabian · August 18, 2026
HOW THE WORK ACTUALLY GETS DONE
This used to take six months. Now it takes weeks.
1 It builds your program directory You send the budget, payroll and ledger files you already have. The software reads the line items and drafts the full list of city programs. Nothing new to build. 2 It predicts what each one costs Machine learning traces how much of every dollar and position goes to which service — so cost can finally be set against outcome.
3 It scores each program five ways Demand. Mandate. Population served. Cost recovery. Reliance on the city. The same five questions asked of every service you provide.
4 It benchmarks you and writes the
playbook
Compared against a library of 300+ governments, it returns a custom set of revenue and reallocation options — each with a dollar figure and a city that did it.
AND THEN IT BECOMES YOUR BUDGET DOCUMENT. Department funding requests tie directly to the priorities this Council sets — in a format staff, residents and elected officials can all read.
It is not a black box. Your staff review and approve every step — the same 60–90 minute sessions that let Collier County sort 500 programs in weeks.
Tyler Technologies · Priority Based Budgeting Chris Fabian · August 18, 2026
TOOL DEMO
WHERE WE STARTED
First Draft PBB Data, Derived from these Public Sources No internal data was used. Department positions and every dollar amount are official; the only thing we modeled is how those positions split across divisions.
Costed services come to $133.6M; adding debt service, transfers out and capital brings it back to the City's own $156.9M FY2026 all-funds total, within $3.83.
WHAT WE READ
1 FY 2027 Proposed Budget Book (315 pp.)
The main source. It prints FY 2026 Adopted next to FY 2027 Proposed, which gives us every adopted account line by fund, division, and account title.
2 FY 2026 Adopted Budget Book
The control totals — expenditures and revenue by category, and the citywide personnel-services figure everything had to tie back to.
3 Authorized Positions by Department and by Fund
381.00 authorized positions across the 16 departments the schedule lists, with City Treasurer (1.00 FTE) folded into Finance for costing. Titles only — no employee names anywhere in this work. 4 SD County Taxpayers Foundation, Municipal Analysis (2024) The FY 2024 outside study our earlier read was built on. Superseded here by the City's own FY 2026 adopted detail.
WHAT WE BUILT FROM IT
16 Departments
29 Divisions
381.0
Positions
HOW IT TIES OUT
People in service departments $64.9M
Everything else $68.8M
Total we costed $133.6M
Revenue those services earn $46.3M
860 costed lines · 99 revenue lines
WHAT YOUR OWN FILES CHANGE
Payroll and position control
The one modeled step goes away. Real loaded cost by position and cost center, including people who split time across services.
General ledger and revenue detail
Parsed budget lines are replaced by authoritative amounts, with grant funds, encumbrances, and fee revenue attached to the service that earns it.
Program crosswalk
Police and Fire are one “Operations” line in the public books.
Your data splits them into patrol, investigations, dispatch, suppression and prevention.
Tyler Technologies · Priority Based Budgeting Chris Fabian · August 18, 2026
WHY THIS MATTERS BEYOND ONE BUDGET YEAR
Every hard question turns out to be the same question.
Each of these is normally its own project, with its own consultants and its own data collection. Structurally, they are one query against one structure.
A budget shortfall
Which programs can change with the least
loss of what the community values?
A grant disappears
Which programs depend on it, and what
replaces the funding?
A fee study
Which programs have unrealized revenue
given who benefits?
A merger with a neighbor
Which programs are duplicated across
jurisdictions?
A service-level debate
What does each level actually cost, and who
relies on it?
A workforce plan
Where is the staffing, and against which
priorities?
A capital decision
Which programs does this asset serve, and at
what operating cost?
A resilience review
Which programs are exposed, and which are
essential?
One inventory. One set of attributes. Eight questions — and every other one you have not asked yet.
THE COST OF ASKING GOES TO ZERO
Today each of those questions requires its own datagathering effort. That cost is why they are answered rarely, slowly, and only under pressure. Once the structure is
standing, the next question is nearly free — which means questions get asked that were never worth a study.
SCARCITY STOPS BEING A CONDITION
It becomes a class of problem with known methods. Not
enough money is never the real constraint — the constraint is not knowing which of a hundred available moves applies to which program. Once position predicts strategy, scarcity is something you work, not something you endure.
AND THE POINT WAS NEVER SAVING
Fourteen of the sixteen positions are about doing something better, not less. The object is the most impact per dollar committed — which is a question you cannot even pose
until every program carries a cost and a measure of what it achieves.
When problems that looked unrelated turn out to be one problem in different clothes, you have found the right unit.
Tyler Technologies · Priority Based Budgeting Chris Fabian · August 18, 2026
PBB RECAP
The four questions you should ask us.
Why us?
I created this method. It has been an
ICMA leading practice since 2012, cited by
S&P, Moody’s and Fitch, and run in more
than 300 governments over twenty years.
We built your first analysis before you
hired us — and it reconciled to your own
published totals within $3.83.
Why now?
Your reserve reaches about $800K by
June. Your city manager asked for this to
be addressed within six months.
The work lands in the budget you build
this spring. Miss that window and you
build one more budget the old way —
with less left to work with.
Will it work here?
Because parts of your budget already
work this way — street sweeping, the
sewer fund, the school district
agreements.
And because we found $13.6M using
nothing but your published documents.
That number improves once your staff
and your real accounting data are in it —
not the other way around.
How are we protected?
Every option is tracked in public, every
quarter: identified, approved, put in
place, and still working a year later.
You will not have to take our word for any
of it. You will watch the number.
AND IT IS NOT THEORY — THESE ARE RUNNING RIGHT NOW
Collier County, FL
$40M
put into action in 90 days. Property tax rate
rolled back two years running, with no
service cuts.
Los Angeles County
$290M
in opportunities just now identified. The
largest local government in the country.
Underway right now.
Kansas City, MO
212
programs scored. Projected shortfall cut
from about $100M to $54M in one budget
cycle.
Pittsburgh, PA
$41M
identified — and reporting later found not
all of it moved. That is exactly why we
publish a scoreboard.
We are not asking you to try something new. We are asking you to do on purpose what you already do by accident.
Tyler Technologies · Priority Based Budgeting Chris Fabian · August 18, 2026
THE DECISION IN FRONT OF YOU
Three ways forward. One leaves you stronger.
Raise taxes
Solves this year. Costs keep growing faster
than revenue, so you are back here — having
spent the goodwill.
Cut services
Solves this year. And permanently makes this
city smaller. You are back here with less to
work with.
Optimize Resources
Share it, streamline it, partner on it, or fund
it another way. Closes the gap and leaves
something behind that keeps working.
None of these is a wrong answer. The third is simply broader — sharing services with a neighbor, taking steps out of a process, bringing in a partner, and charging the right people, as well as finding another way to pay.
The next shock will come. It always does.
The question is whether you meet it with a list of options you built in advance, or invent an answer while the building is on fire.
Tyler Technologies · Priority Based Budgeting Chris Fabian · August 18, 2026