DATE: JANUARY 9, 2024
DEPARTMENT: Community Development & Library and Community services FROM: jim pia, Interim city manager
BY: Jose arreola, Community Safety administrator; Monica GUrmilan, Senior planner
TITLE: 2024 Budget engagement UPDATE
RECOMMENDED MOTION:
No action required; this item is informational only.
DISCUSSION:
Background
Over the past several years, City staff has implemented an extensive community engagement process in the development of the City budget using an equity lens, which staff is looking to replicate for the upcoming fiscal year. The goal is that any Salinas resident that wants to have input in the City budget has the opportunity to do so. The last engagement process included a city-wide online survey, four community meetings, three in person and one via Zoom, and forty pop-up activities (interactive in-person surveys) throughout the City. Twenty pop ups were conducted by the Library Community Services and Community Development departments. Five were facilitated by the Administration, Police, Public Works, and Fire Departments.
Community Engagement Summary FY 23/24
Engagement Activity
Number of Participants
Online Survey
2,711
Pop-up Activities
1,637
Community Meetings
183
Community Engagement Strategy FY 24/25
The main aspects of the previous engagement strategy will be replicated with slight adjustments. The last budget survey was designed around the General Plan’s Guiding Principles, which was helpful to organize priorities but made the survey a bit lengthy. There were thirty-two priority options to select in last year’s survey. This year, Directors will be asked to provide two budget priorities (project, program, staff needs). This will create ten priority options which will support more engagement in the pop-up activities, encourage increased participation with the online survey, as well as streamline the budget prioritization process.
The online survey will be made public no later than December 15, 2023, and will remain open until February 21, 2024. This timeline will ensure staff has enough time to compile data and reflect community priorities in the individual department budgets. The survey will be promoted on our website, all City social media channels, on flyers in busy businesses and in all public City facilities. Pop-ups will follow a similar timeline commencing in early January 2024.
This year’s community engagement will include increased participation from community partners, primarily school districts and community-based organizations. Pop-up activities will be coordinated with the various Salinas school districts and outside services contracts will be explored for community-based organizations to support budget engagement with their networks and across the City. The goal will be to complete forty pop-ups total, twenty to be done by City staff and twenty by community-based organizations. The idea is for community collaboration to increase participation without a need to increase the number of pop-up activities. Pop-ups will focus on areas and populations of the City that are generally hard to reach or have traditionally lower rates of civic participation.
The number of meetings will be reduced from four to two, one in English and another in Spanish. The meetings will be conducted in the designated language with interpretation available for those who request it. The idea to reduce the number of meetings stems from duplicative attendance and low participation, primarily over Zoom. During the community meetings, residents indicated a desire to hold budget meetings facilitated in Spanish to help increase participation. Increased participation will reduce our need to hold additional sessions.
This year’s budget engagement will include an outside services budget of $11,700 to support City-wide pop-up activities, interpretation support, and food for community meetings. This amount has been carried over from last year’s budget engagement budget.
Proposed Timeline (Approximate)
12/15: Survey opens
1/8: Pop-up activities begin
2/8 & 2/15: Community meetings (Breadbox and Sherwood Hall) 2/21: Survey closes & pop-up activities end
2/26: All data due to Finance Department and Directors
FISCAL AND SUSTAINABILITY IMPACT:
There is no cost associated with providing this information.
ATTACHMENTS:
PowerPoint
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Finance Committee