Via Twitter today, I came across a new online consultation by the City of Los Angeles: Los Angeles Budget Challenge
How will you balance the City’s budget?
The Mayor of the City of Los Angeles is given the responsibility by the City Charter to develop a budget plan that must be presented for City Council consideration by April 20th of each year.
This year, the City of Los Angles will be challenged by many issues, including declining revenues, increased service demands, and soaring City pension contributions.
As we begin the planning process for Fiscal Year 2010-11, I invite you to help me develop my proposed budget by participating in the Los Angeles Budget Challenge where you will be asked to make some of the tough choices necessary to balance the City’s budget.
The site does not require registration, but participants are asked to identify their age group and zip code. Following a brief overview of the current budget situation and some instructions, the site leads into a total of twelve survey items, a selection of key issues and related policy proposals. Each item provides participants with a bit of basic background information. Participants can then choose between two to four pre-defined options, each of which with more or less of a deficit-reducing impact on the budget.
According to the site, the city is facing a $400 million budget deficit in FY 2010/2011. The eight survey items under spending offer participants up to $293 million in budget cuts and savings. The four items under revenue offer up to $280 million in additional revenue.
Screenshot gallery
From a participation perspective, there are always a lot of questions one could ask for further analysis: How were the issues and policy proposals chosen that made it onto the survey? What will happen to the input? How binding is it? How does this fit into the overall budgeting process? Etc.
However, I just wanted to point out one easily overlooked detail that struck me as odd. Turns out there is one item among the twelve that won’t take “no” for an answer (the last one, which also happens to be the biggest, relatively): Public Private Partnerships for Parking Structures/Meters
If you do the math, it is impossible to balance the budget unless a participant chooses option 2 (“Yes. The City should pursue a P3 agreement for City parking structures only.”) or option 3 (“Yes. The City should pursue a P3 agreement for CIty parking structures and City parking meters.”).
Honi soit qui mal y pense…
It’s not apparent if this site uses an off-the-shelf tool. I’ve added it to ParticipateDB, nonetheless.
Update: Looks like they’re using the Next 10 Budget Challenge tool (also added to ParticipateDB).
Related posts:
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Have you e-mailed them?
No, haven’t contacted them. But maybe that’s a good idea. I’ll point them to this post.
Tim,
I’ve not reviewed the site extensively, but if I do the math from the post, the game includes $573 in deficit reduction ($293 cuts/savings + $280 in income increases). That would mean participants could say no to this item but would have to accept virtually all of the other cuts/savings and increases (having to find $400 out of $473).
This, then, raises a slew of other questions….
Actually, the total maximum volume of items 1-11 is only $373 million. In order to get the budget balanced, participants are required to agree at least with the “small” option of $100 million in new revenue from public private partnerships as proposed under item 12.
Sorry if that was unclear from the post.
I noticed the same thing completely separately today. In addition, the City spent a lot of money upgrading to the newer electronic parking meters. Do you think we will be paid back when we privatize?
There is some sloppy math as well: $25.0M revenue is generated by **doubling** the Stormwater Pollution Abatement Charge. AND, $25.0M revenue is generated by **tripling** the same charge. HUH?!?
This budget simulator by the New York Times looks a lot better: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html
{ 5 trackbacks }