TOWN OF BLACKFALDS REGULAR COUNCIL MEETING REQUEST FOR DECISION. Betty Quinlan, Director of Corporate Services

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1 TOWN OF BLACKFALDS REGULAR COUNCIL MEETING REQUEST FOR DECISION MEETING DATE: July 12, 2016 ORIGINATED BY: SUBJECT: Betty Quinlan, Director of Corporate Services Citizen Budget BACKGROUND: The company, Citizen Budget was at the trade show at the 2016 FCM Conference in Winnipeg. This company hosts citizen budget engagement software and offers three different modules for use. A request was made to review this software and prepare a presentation for Council. DISCUSSION: A review of budget engagement/consultation software was conducted through google search of any other companies offering similar products, searching various municipal websites, a review of the Citizen Budget website, a review of the three module links they provided and a telephone meeting with the Budget Engagement Advisor Mr. Nik Lopez and contacting municipalities that have used the product. The google and municipal search did not identify any similar software currently available. Citizen Budget is a subset of Open North, a not-for-profit, social enterprise that specializes in the development of innovative online tools that promote government transparency and citizen participation. They currently have 60 clients using this software as a means to educate and engage their citizens in the budget process. Their client list includes Victoria, Edmonton, Lethbridge, Guelph, Saskatoon, Prince George, Lloydminster and Seattle to name a few. They also mentioned that the product is so affordable they even have towns of 2,000 becoming clients. There are three modules available: Taxes version which allows residents to vote on how their tax dollars are spent. Balanced Budget version which has residents balancing the budget using real data. Capital Project version which allows residents to vote on their preferences for capital projects such as parks, recreation facilities and infrastructure. Links to these demos will be presented at Council to provide an overview of how each module operates. The premise of these budget engagement modules is to provide an interactive and interesting way for the residents to participate in the budgeting process and help make their view known. It is also educational as it highlights the various operations that a municipality runs to make a community what it is. It helps connect the cost and level of services to allow people to see what their taxes are being spent on and how an increase or decrease will affect them. The software is cloud-based hosted on secure Canadian or US servers, as needed, with a 99.99% uptime guarantee with no IT requirements. The data is sent from the municipality to Citizen Budget who then load it onto the website. Each module costs $1,750 per year

2 TOWN OF BLACKFALDS REGULAR COUNCIL MEETING REQUEST FOR DECISION and most municipalities usually select only one. After the consultation period reports are available. The private dashboard allows you to track analytics and trends on your Citizen Budget consultation along with a report that aggregates and analyzes all responses on a daily basis. Residents can track how their responses measure up to everyone else s. These modules also enable the municipality to collect demographics on the participants such as age, gender and residency along with general comments. Feedback from other municipalities is outstanding at the time of drafting this document. It is hoped that responses will have been received in time for the Council meeting. SUMMARY Citizen Budget appears to be a very robust and interesting way to engage and educate residents in the budgeting process and the municipal operations. It would be possible to implement it for the 2017 budget. The timeline would be a little later than normal, but it would be an excellent opportunity to engage the community. If the Town continues to use Citizen Budget the timeline for subsequent years would be moved up in the year to allow a longer time frame to collect information and to consolidate it into the budget. FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS: The cost per module is $1,750 and staff time for set up. Funding could be accommodated from the existing 2016 Information Systems software budget. ADMINISTRATIVE RECOMMENDATION: That Council move to direct Administration to implement Citizen Budget for the 2017 budget year. ALTERNATIVES: a) That Council not accept to implement the Citizen Budget for the 2017 budget year. b) That Council move to implement the Citizen Budget for the 2018 budget year. c) That Council refer this back to Administration for further review. Attachments: Citizen Budget Website Information Approvals: Acting CAO Sean Barnes Department Director/Author

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