City Budget Analysis:
Community Engagement and Transparency
In February, the City of Lawrence provided community engagement opportunities for residents to “express their priorities for the budget”
and address the City’s expected $6.5m deficit next year.
They provided an engagement program, called A Balancing Act, that was an exercise for residents to balance the budget.
The Coalition for Collaborative Governance researched and analyzed the City’s community engagement offerings to determine if these fulfilled the City’s Strategic Plan commitment to collaborative engagement “to drive action and build trust in our government.”
Our research also indicates that the City’s engagement tool
only allowed participants to provide input if they successfully made 49 funding decisions that eliminated the deficit.
was so challenging to use that it discouraged participation.
only addressed 24% of the City’s total budget.
did not allow participants to provide input about the rest of the budget.
produced some biased results.
Our research shows that the City engaged our community earlier in the budget process this year than ever before and that they transparently shared the input they gathered with the City Commission.
We thank them for their efforts to improve the process of gathering and using community input.
Questions from the “Balancing Act” community engagement activity that was available for public input from February 1-28, 2025.
