To the Menlo Park City Council and Staff - As you finalize the fiscal year 2023-2024 budget and the capital improvement plan, I wanted to point you to this Grist article describing how Pittsburgh has taken a new approach to crafting its budget. Utilizing a strategy of priority-based budgeting, the city "maps every single dollar a city spends to a specific program — everything from “rodent baiting” to recycling collection — then scores each one according to how it achieves the city’s priorities." Perhaps Menlo Park is already utilizing a similar approach to budgeting. If not, it seems that this approach would be worth exploiting further in future budget exercises. It has been found that, "on average, a city’s first pass at a priority-based budget frees up 10–15% of an existing budget for pressing work."

As the Citys budget projections for the next few years forecast shortfalls, it seems that this method could 1) help balance the budget and 2) reallocate resources towards the Citys priorities.

Thank you for your consideration.

Here is the link again to the article - https://grist.org/solutions/pittsburgh-priority-budgeting-climate/

Sincerely,

John McKenna
Menlo Park, CA
(650) 776-8548