It’s hard to visualize $282.3 million. It’s not much easier to divvy it up. So the city of Longmont is bringing it down to a more basic question:
If the city had $1,000 to spend, where should it go?
Residents will be able to give their answers online, or face-to-face at local grocery stores, or even be dropping poker chips into a jar. That last option, with each chip representing $100, was set up Wednesday; the displays are now available at the civic center, the library, the senior center, the museum, the recreation center, the youth center and the St. Vrain Memorial Building.
“The concept is, make it easy to respond,” said Jon Clarke of the city’s community and neighborhood resources program.
If this seems familiar, it should. Longmont tried a similar experiment in 2009, asking residents to break up a $100 “budget” into a few categories. Not a lot was done with it at the time — but these days, the city has a $2.5 million budget gap to address, areas that don’t have a regular revenue source and often rely on money left over from the last budget.
“It’s about putting taxpayers’ and ratepayers’ resources into the areas that are most impactful,” Assistant City Manager Sandi Seader said.
The surveys and the jars ask residents to break up their $1,000 between five categories:
• A safe community
• A reliable, innovative and resilient infrastructure
• A thriving economic climate
• Vibrant amenities and opportunities for all
• Responsible internal operations and governance
As residents vote with their imaginary dollars, city staff will also be scoring their own services based on how well they fit those categories and a few other qualities, such as whether the service is mandated or whether it’s one that only the city provides. The dollar vote will be used to weight the staff’s scoring, helping set the initial recommendations for the 2015 budget.
The dollar voting runs through April 30. The City Council will see the results in May and the recommendations based on them at a June 27 retreat.
The survey can be taken online by going to ci.longmont.co.us/WedRepForm.nsf/FinBudgetForm. Those without Internet access can call the city manager’s office at 303-651-8601 for assistance or visit the displays.
City staff will also visit grocery stores at random to conduct the surveys.
While the chip displays can only be “spent” $100 at a time, the online or in-person surveys can be allocated down to single dollars, if desired.
“You could say ‘Spend $267 here,'” Seader said. “We wanted to make it a little finer-grained than last time.”
Contact Times-Call staff writer Scott Rochat at 303-684-5220 or srochat@times-call.com
