Title
Priorities, Performance, and Investment (PPI) Cycle Community Engagement in 2020
Recommended Action
Committee Recommendation:
Not referred to a committee.
City Manager Recommendation:
Receive a briefing and discuss an approach to community engagement to inform priorities and investments for 2021.
Report
Issue:
Whether to receive a briefing and discuss an approach to community engagement to inform priorities and investments for 2021.
Staff Contact:
Stacey Ray, Senior Planner, Administrative Services, 360.753.8046
Presenter(s):
Stacey Ray, Senior Planner, Office of Performance & Innovation, Administrative Services
Background and Analysis:
2018 Community Conversation Informs the 2019 Budget
2018 was the first year the City of Olympia hosted a Community Conversation on Budget Priorities to inform the budget process. The purpose was to listen to citizen’s perspectives on the top priorities for the City so that the City Council could use what they heard to inform the 2019 budget process. Thirty-five residents participated, with over 40 percent having said this was their first experience being part of a City planning process.
Outcomes from the conversation met several important goals and purposes:
• Councilmembers received valuable input from community member perspectives not normally represented through traditional outreach means;
• Councilmembers were subsequently able to respond to the input received by allocating additional funds to top priority areas they heard from citizens; and
• Greater awareness and trust was fostered in City government.
Hosting the community conversation was piloted as part of the first full year of implementing the new annual Priorities, Performance, and Investment (PPI) Cycle. The PPI cycle includes gathering the community's priorities and evaluating our performance so we can adjust our investments as necessary to achieve the community's vision.
2019 Budget Engagement Approach to Inform the 2020 Budget
In 2019, staff piloted reaching even more individuals using the City’s online engagement platform, Engage Olympia. This virtual conversation was called 2020 Budget - Your Priorities and was built around surveys for each focus area that asked citizens their top priorities. 186 unique individuals responded to one or more of the surveys, for a total of 471 different surveys. The pilot also introduced OpenGov as a user-friendly portal for learning more about the City’s finances, and a series of “We Budget Differently” videos to highlight how the PPI cycle helps guide City learning and decision-making.
The purpose of this agenda item is for staff to share and discuss with Committee members several possible approaches to community engagement to inform the priorities and investments elements of this year’s PPI Cycle.
Based on the past two year’s approaches, one option is to use Engage Olympia again, using similar survey and educational tools as in 2019. A second option is to forgo any additional outreach and delve more deeply into data collected using Engage Olympia in 2019. A third option is to use what we learned from Engage Olympia in 2019 (and other planning processes) as the basis for hosting a more targeted community conversation with community members who are typically underrepresented or for which there is a desire to learn more about their priorities, such as residents who identify as renting their home.
Attachments:
Priorities, Performance, and Investments Cycle