2026-10-27 - Finance Committee

Okay, I'd like to call the Finance

Committee agenda for the committee to

order with the city of Green Bay on

Tuesday, April 27th.

Uh first

Pardon?

>> October.

>> Said April.

>> I said April.

>> Yeah.

>> Well, I really read that one wrong,

didn't I?

>> [laughter]

>> October 27th.

Roll call.

[Alder name omitted].

>> Present.

>> [Alder name omitted] present.

>> Present.

Present.

>> [Alder name omitted].

>> Present.

>> Okay, approval of the agenda.

>> Motion to approve.

>> Second.

>> Motion made by the alder, seconded by

the alder. All in favor?

>> Aye.

>> Opposed?

>> Aye.

>> None. All right, let's move on to

approval of the minutes.

>> Motion to approve.

>> Second.

>> Motion by the alder, seconded by the

alder. All in favor?

>> Aye.

>> Aye.

>> Aye.

And no who up

Nobody dispersed. So, new business.

Information only presentation from Tyler

Technologies regarding priority-based

budgeting.

Hello.

>> Hello.

>> I got to turn it over to staff and

>> Can you let me back in?

>> Oh.

>> I had to leave and come back.

>> I apologize for that.

>> No, that was my fault.

>> Okay, and then I will make you

co-host.

>> Yes, so the presenter's going to run through the

report for everyone and then a

background of priority-based budgeting.

Thanks for flying to be here.

Yeah.

>> Appreciate [clears throat] it.

>> Yeah.

You want to take it away?

>> Yeah, yeah. Uh, members of the

committee, uh, thank you very much. I

appreciate your

opportunity to speak with you today uh,

about priority-based budgeting. Uh, I

just thought I'd go into some really

quick background and then uh, I'll share

my screen, the report that we we'll go

over and then open it up to any

questions at the end.

Uh,

so I like to start off with a quick

story of kind of how I got involved with

priority-based budgeting. So, about 5

years ago, I was working I live in the I

live in another city, working

for a city council there.

Uh, my role was to analyze and review

the budget, provide recommendations to

city council. Uh, so one day I get a

text from a policy analyst from one of

our city councilors

and they asked me the question, um,

how much do we budget for the airplane

in our police department?

>> Can you let her back in?

>> Yep. I've been waiting for There it is.

>> Thank you.

>> Uh, text message is asking how much do

we budget for an airplane in our police

department?

Um, and so, you know, again, coming to

me asking me like, you know, what this

is. I was like, okay, yeah.

The problem was is we didn't see that in

our budget book anywhere, right? It

wasn't in the numerous spreadsheets that

we created. Uh, again, you look you

thumb through everything. I knew I had

about 25 departments, $300 million

general fund budget, about 600

employees. Nowhere we talk about an

airplane.

Uh, what made matters worse was,

um, I sent a message back to the policy

analyst and I said,

I wasn't even aware that we had an

airplane in the in the police

department. And about 10 seconds later,

he sends me a link uh, to our website,

city's website, showing a picture of a

1982 Cessna airplane. So,

as you can imagine, really embarrassed,

right? That I I didn't under know this

piece of information, but it really got

me thinking. It was like, I don't think

we really knew uh, uh, in terms of our

budget like what we were really funding,

like what kind of services we actually

We in our organization. And so it got me

thinking, we needed to give better

information to our decision makers,

uh, to the appropriating body, to our

citizens about what services we were

actually providing in the city. And it

kind of led me down this path to

priority-based budgeting, where we are

taking the traditional budget in its

current form, line items, departments,

funds, divisions, and translating that

into more program-central,

program-based, uh, review of the budget.

In other words, rather than seeing

things like contractual services and

travel and supplies, we're actually

looking for services, right? So, the

questions that we were getting asked

from a city council perspective were

things like, "How much do we budget for

the airplane, right? How much do we

invest in uh, small business association

programs? How much do we invest in

senior meal programs or youth, uh,

development activities?" Those are the

types of questions they were asking.

They didn't They weren't really asking

just how big our general fund budget

was, right? And so that led us down this

path of priority-based budgeting.

So, and that's what I'm going to share

my screen here. Am I sharing?

>> [clears throat]

>> And will the remote alder be able to see that?

>> Oh, yes, you should be able.

>> Okay, [clears throat] that's good.

>> I stop sharing my screen.

>> Yes, I can see it.

>> Okay.

>> When he pulls up the database.

>> We can't even see it.

Sorry, because I can see it when

sometimes I talk.

So, can you see that?

>> Yeah.

>> Okay.

>> All right.

>> There we go.

Okay.

So, as I mentioned, the traditional

budget, you know, it's organized by

those line items, by those funds,

departments, and what we're really

trying to do is reorganize,

uh, that information around programs,

services that it provides to the

citizens,

uh, and so that we you can kind of see

how well, uh, what we're doing and is it

really achieving what we're hoping that

it hopes to achieve in terms of our

strategic goals.

Now, what we can see here is just a very

brief overview. On the left-hand side is

just a traditional kind of way of

looking at the budget. Most

organizations, most cities, counties,

states will kind of look at a budget

this way. We have a department, we have

line items like salaries,

overtime, vehicles and equipment, right?

And what that really does though is it

just answers like who spends and on

what, right? Is is what we kind of see

in a traditional budgeting sense.

What we're really looking for is on your

right-hand side there is a an example of

a program. So, now we see something like

snow removal, right? And what we can see

is the full cost of providing a snow

removal program from all funding

sources. We can see how many positions

are involved in providing such a

program. And then we can start to see

how they aligned with the strategic

goals of the city, in this case

infrastructure and recreation, public

safety. It has a really strong link to

those priorities. And so, what we're

looking at is it's answering the

question of what do the residents

receive, and how does it align with our

city goals?

And I'll go into a little bit more of

that program as a highlight, so we can

kind of see business intelligence that

we're we're creating with the

priority-based budgeting process.

To kind of give some background

um before we kind of get into the report

itself, uh the work was done in four

steps. And first what I want to

say thank you very much to the this

room. each of the staff

they were really instrumental in helping

us create this data set along with all

the department directors and everyone

involved. Um you know, building this

type of data set

it is not as easy as people would hope

it is to be, so it takes a lot of you

know, reviewing data,

uh making changes here and there. So,

the staff here in Green Bay did a

excellent job of putting this all

together uh for you all to review. So,

just wanted to say thank you to to them

for that.

>> How long has this taken to get here?

>> So, I think [clears throat] we initially

contracted with

priority based budgeting uh maybe 2021 I

think around that time. It's gone

through some iterations on their side.

They then merged with Tyler

Technologies. So, we've been uploading

our budget in there a few years. I think

we took a year off

and now we've uploaded the past couple

of years now with Tyler Technologies.

Since we got in the base from other

years, we now like finance really worked

hard on putting our 2026 budget into

this newest program. So, we built them

for several years and now it's kind of

bringing it to the point where we're

uploading our budget and this year we've

looked at which will be kind of

talked about later from now, insights

and best practices for municipalities

and then hopefully as years progress

we'll have a better capability of

uploading this earlier and incorporating

into the budget process earlier.

>> So, you have three budgets in here?

>> The latest one we we reviewed is the

2026 adopted budget. That's the latest

one.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> That's the one we're working off right

now.

>> Okay.

>> Uh so, using that 2026 budget we

identified 385 total programs or

services.

212

of we considered what we call community

programs so they directly serve the

community and about 173 of those

programs are really to support city

operations within Green Bay. Now, we

didn't analyze the entire budget. I

believe the entire budget for 2026 was

about 328 million. We analyzed about 294

of that. We didn't include things like

debt service and some other ancillary

funds and that's by design cuz usually

those types of funds that you know what

they're paying for, right? You're paying

for debt. So, what we really

concentrated on are the general fund,

the public works and some of the other

special revenue funds. So, 294 is what

we actually analyzed as part of this

process of 2026 budget.

And then what we did is we we take that

information and we rate it against

your strategic plan and also what we

call

basic program attributes for priority

based budgeting and I'll get into that

here in a second. And then from there

ideally when you build this data set is

we can then analyze and say, "Okay, what

what are we seeing?" Right? What what

are we seeing in terms of how Green Bay

offers these services? How does Green

Bay compare to other municipalities who

also provide very similar services? And

what else is out there in terms of

delivering programs with different

revenue models and any cost-saving

opportunities? And so, through the

insights,

we can start to look at your information

and start to provide that information

for departments. And departments are

have looked at to date uh 499 of these

ideas and are identifying whether it's

something that they can do, something

that they're interested in, something

that may not be feasible,

uh or something that maybe they've

already done in the past. And so, but

499 ideas is what's been reviewed so far

by the staff.

>> And where did they ideas come from?

>> They come from municipalities across the

nation. So, we take our our database of

Tyler Technologies,

>> Okay.

>> the benefits of working with a large

organization, and we can identify other

PBB communities who have done this to

say, "How does Green Bay compare to

those services that are being offered in

terms of cost,

uh

delivery, etc.?" And we can kind of pull

that information for you guys.

Now now the classic priority-based

budgeting is to align programs with

priorities. And to do that, we have to

rate our programs against those

priorities and against basic program

attributes. And on the screen there, you

can see we rated programs uh based on

the five strategic goals uh at the city.

So, infrastructure and recreation,

balanced and equitable community

development, public safety,

organizational excellence, and employee

engagement. And then again, we also uh

evaluated these programs against basic

attributes. So, questions like "Is this

a mandated program?" And if so, at what

level is this mandated? Um is there any

other organization, nonprofit, private

entity that could provide this service?

Uh what is the demand level of this

program? Is it up? Is it down? Is it

steady? Who benefits from such a

program? Majority of the population? A

small sector of the population? And then

finally, does this program recover any

other cost outside of maybe general fund

uh supplementation? So, we take those

five attributes along with the five

strategic plan goals and we come up with

a rating of those and I'll give you a

graphic here in a second of what that

looks like.

But, as we go through this, one thing I

want to highly emphasize when we're

looking at rating of programs is that

the program rating or score ha- has

nothing to do with the performance of a

program. It doesn't It doesn't measure

how well something is running, uh, the

importance from the community

perspective. All it is is a rating of of

five uh, evaluated against the

priorities, how many of those priorities

does a program touch? Some impact many

priorities, which they kind of then will

move up the the chain there and some

impact one or a few and so it'll kind of

show on the lower end. But, I just want

to emphasize it has nothing to do in

terms of ranking of importance or any or

anything like that.

>> Just again, jump in with

>> Sure.

>> So, when we score the programs, what we

do is each department scores their

programs on their own and then we have

peer review teams that score the

programs against each other. So, it's

not just one department saying, "Yes,

it's high in every category." They

review it and then there's a peer review

team that scores as well. So, it kind of

balances out with the scores.

>> Okay, and then I'm assuming discussion

and they agree, so that there's a

standardization as to how those scores

come.

>> Yep.

>> What they're scoring is how well it

aligns with strategic priorities, not

how well the programs are doing.

>> Exactly, yep.

So,

So, what we do is again, every every

dollar we measure, we say it's tied to a

program and then every program is tied

to a priority. And what we see here is

we start to look at the data that we

developed and it's kind of probably hard

to see on the screen from your, uh,

point of view there. But, we can look at

things like, "Well, how does it align

uh, with our strategic priorities?" And

from what we can see in this chart here,

um, about 37%

of what is being invested, uh, is really

aligned with the infrastructure

[clears throat] and recreation priority.

About another third almost 31% is

related to the balance of equitable

community development

and then $52 million

is invested in public safety. So again,

high-level data, you can start to see

well, where where are investments going

in terms of the relationship to the

priorities.

Now, in classic PBB sense, what is the

alignment of those? And we have, and

I'll show you a different graph here,

but we have what we call four quartiles.

So we have everywhere from least aligned

all the way up to most aligned,

and that's where we do those program

meetings. As you can see,

38% is most aligned with your

priorities, and almost 40% or more

aligned. So

about 80 something percent is in that

top two tiers of alignment with your

priorities, which is a really great

indication that you guys are really

investing in the priorities that you've

set forth for the community. That's a

really good measurement that we can see

there.

Um this chart just is just a breakdown

of where spending is it by the

departments. And then the last one here,

I'll go into this a little bit more too,

but we really also want to look at,

well, what's the requirement to provide

these services, right? What level of

requirement do we have to have? Is it a

state or federal requirement? Is a local

ordinance or policy requirement? And

what we see in this data is that about

48% of programs and services that you're

offering are based on a state or federal

mandate requirement, and about 45% is

based on a local ordinance or policy. So

and the rest of it is there's no legal

mandate to provide those services. Now,

again, those data points are important

because if you have programs that are

not mandated, you have a lot of

flexibility in terms of what you can do

with those types of programs, right?

Those programs that are on a local

policy basis, you have some wiggle room,

right? But it's going to take a little

bit of maneuvering if you want to make

any sort of changes, but you have a

little bit more flexibility there as

well. Whereas on the state and federal

side, not much wiggle room in terms of

like you have to provide the service,

but what you do have is the ability to

look at, well, what's our service level

requirement for providing these programs

and services? Yes, that we we do have to

provide these, but at what level, right?

And so a prime example is we were

working with the county

who has a requirement to provide polling

centers, right, during election season.

And we looked at that, said, "Okay,

well, this is how much you're investing

in providing those polling services.

What's the minimum service level

requirement to do so?" What we were

finding is that they're funding about a

thousand voting centers. This is a very

large county, but a thousand voting

centers is what they were providing

funding for. The requirement was only

that they had to do 500, right? And so

again, knowing that is like during peak

election season, you can make a

decision. Do we fund only 500? Do we do

750? Do we do the full thousand? Uh in

lean times, we just say, "Well, we're

only going to fund the 500." But again,

it is a requirement, but knowing what

the service level is allows you to make

those adjustments uh without uh

messing with the demand that you're

required to do. So.

>> Do you also then measure the amount of

federal funds or state funds that come

in to support those mandates?

Is that part of the process?

>> bring that information in as well to see

like what are we getting in terms of

grants or anything else like that, and

then we do tie those revenues to those

specific programs. Yes.

>> Cuz I'd be curious about those things

that are required funding and those

things that

we if the federal and state, if it's a

requirement of us, how much money are

they

sending

to the municipality to help?

>> Yes, so finance can correct me if I'm

wrong here, but what I believe what we

have in the system is essentially like

what we've budgeted for. So, if there's

like a

budgeted grant that we know we get and

it's in our system, it will be in there.

But if there's like let's say there's no

federal funding, right? We won't have

that answer. It just just won't be in

there. So, if it's in the budget, it

will show up in here.

>> Okay.

>> Befo- before you move on to the next

thing, um so I'm I'm looking at what you

shared with us, which is a slightly

different graph, I think, than what's up

there, but

um

we've

I'm just hearing the sound of that.

Um we've got these um

different categories that are less

aligned and least aligned. Could you

just give us examples of what that

spending would be? I I mean, I'm I'm

just trying to wrap my head around it.

What are some examples of those kind of

things?

>> I think we have to leave the door open

for the

>> Oh, yeah.

>> public meeting.

>> Yeah, we should.

>> We have to leave the door open for the

public meeting.

>> Thank you.

>> Uh

yeah, so I'm going to actually show you

um I don't know what view you may be

looking at, but I'm going to show you

this view here to kind of respond to

that question. So, um again, we break

out our programs in a community lens or

a governance lens. And so, this

distribution here shows you on the far

left-hand side programs that are uh

least aligned with priorities, and the

ones on the right are your most aligned,

right? And so, let's look at one for

example. I'm going to pull up one here

called special events. And so, again,

may be hard to see here, but from

special events, we're going to look at

why is it maybe least aligned with

priorities? And so, we we measure it

against again three priorities uh of

infrastructure,

uh balanced and equitable community

development, and public safety. As you

can see when they were rated, um they

were given a score of two. So, about

midway

um meeting that requirement on those

three priorities.

And then we looked at the basic

attribute and said, "Okay, demand is

flat." So, that was a scored midway.

There's no cost recovery.

Um it benefits the majority of the

population, so it scores high there.

However, uh there's no mandate to

provide the service, and other

communities or other entities could

provide this in theory, right? So,

again, when you look at that rating, you

can see why it starts to get to a least

aligned. Now, I'm going to pull up one

that is on the higher end so we can kind

of see like the difference here. Um

let's look at a site plan review, for

example.

Right away you can see

uh on the site plan review, when it

comes to the same three priorities,

these are scored much higher, right? So,

threes and fours and fours for public

safety, balanced and equitable

community, and infrastructure. And then

when we look at the basic attributes,

the demand is increasing, it recovers

some costs, the benefits the majority of

the population, uh the city is the sole

provider of the service, and it's a

self-mandate. So, that's how you can

start to see when when you have a least

aligned program, you you to see like it

doesn't quite hit some of these

priorities and it maybe doesn't score

very well on the attributes.

>> Right. Which doesn't mean we shouldn't

do it. It just

>> It doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. No.

>> We're getting an idea of

how everything measures up.

>> Exactly. Yep.

>> Yep.

>> And this view here, I'm glad you asked

that question cuz it lends us into this

view. This is the classic priority based

budgeting. This is how

when we started this over a decade ago

and probably when Green Bay also first

started doing this work is this is where

when we would rate programs we'd see

this quartile view. At least the line

above this line. And so again, as a new

report you should be able to click on

any one of these dots. They all

represent a program and you can start to

look at how they were rated against the

priorities and the basic attributes.

>> So you should have gotten a static

report but then there's also like one a

link to like a website.

>> Okay.

>> report. And that's he's going through

the interactive report right now.

>> Do you have that?

Is that in

>> I'll look for it.

>> Yeah.

>> And I thought I'd sent it to you in the

second email. You should have it. It's a

>> Oh, it's the one that I asked you about.

Okay.

>> Yeah, so there's a they look like

attachments. It's like one is like a PDF

attachment and then the other one it

looks like an attachment but it goes to

like a web browser.

>> It it'll look like

>> Yeah, so what we're hoping to do today

is kind of show you some like tips and

tricks how to use the interactive tools

so you can really play with it on your

own too and ask questions

>> Yeah, in this view when you open it up

when you get a chance to review it

again, click on any of these dots.

Again, they represent the programs. Uh

on the top here, again we we've

separated out between the community

programs and the what we call governance

programs. So more of the internal

operations. I can click on the

governance tab and I start to see the

same view and I can also look at

programs.

The difference as you're looking at

these when you're when we categorize a

program as a community versus a

governance

community programs only get rated

against the community priorities which

there's three of them and the governance

programs only get rated against the

governance priorities. And the reason

for that is that we want to give every

program kind of like a fair shake in

terms of an evaluation process. It's not

really fair to to measure a media

relations press website against things

like public safety or infrastructure,

right? They really are more internal in

nature. And so we try to give them their

fair shake and and have it a different

evaluation criteria when we're looking

at that. So as you go through your

report, just know that there's going to

be kind of two different sets, community

and governance as you go through that.

But again, each one you can click on it

and it pulls up a menu on the right-hand

side and you can kind of see some basic

information about it, FTEs, where its

alignment is, and then how it was

scored. It also provides some

you know, conversational pieces at the

bottom here of like as you're evaluating

these programs, what types of

conversations should we be having about

these services.

Um

>> So the fire red buttons over there.

>> This on the left-hand side, yes.

>> Way over.

>> Yeah.

>> Just curious.

>> This one's uh personal property

assessment program. Um so it's updating

the computer system every year.

Um again, when we were evaluated against

the the priorities,

um didn't really have an impact against

organizational excellence or employee

engagement. And when it comes to the

attributes, again, um a decrease in

demand, no cost recovery, uh very small

sector of the population, no mandate,

and someone else could potentially do

this type of service. So

>> be a little deceiving. Personal property

in Wisconsin went away 2 years ago.

>> Oh, there you go.

>> That's why. So when I res-

>> Yeah, yeah.

>> scored at least recently, it kind of

dropped it off in all zeros and it still

showed up because 5 years ago it was

there. So that one's that one's probably

deceiving cuz

that's no longer a requirement by the

state. So that one's probably deceiving.

>> Well, I was really looking at those

outliers.

>> Yeah, yep. So that one could you find a

way to make that one go away cuz that's

not

>> Yeah, we can just delete the program.

And and I I like to say that the beauty

of this process when we do this is I I

like to consider it's you're never

really done, right? And so it's

circumstances like this where you see

something that may have have gone away

over the years and you're going to want

to readjust the data, but this process

is the reason we like to kind of keep it

ongoing is cuz we're always reviewing

and looking at how what services we're

providing to our community.

Um

>> The next one over is notary public

services.

Not a lot of demand for it.

>> Um at the bottom here uh

we have our uh a high-level view of what

we call our insights. So again, when we

look at what we talk about our insights,

and this is a more newer development

with priority-based budgeting is that

we take every program and service that

is being offered by the city of Green

Bay, and again, we we analyze it through

our database of other PBB communities

and other communities around the nation.

And what we're looking for is

what else are cities doing um in terms

of the very same program or very similar

program that you're offering, and how

does it measure up? How does it measure

up in terms of how many FTE are provided

in it? What does it cost to provide this

particular service and a comparison

there? We also look at what are other

ways What Are there any other funding

models outside of maybe general fund

subsidy? Are there other revenue ideas

that an organization has come up with to

fund a particular program or service?

And so we provided in our initial

go-around, and we do this every year.

The initial go-around uh pulled up about

2,400 ideas. Now, we don't expect all

2,400 to get reviewed in year one. That

the whole point is that it's kind of

like a library that we can kind of

review over time. But to date, as of

yesterday, uh 499 of these ideas were

reviewed by departments.

Um 306 were identified as something that

has already been in place, so Green Bay

is already doing this in comparison to

other organizations, which again, when

you measure up, you're like, "This is

great. We're already doing a lot of the

things that other cities are doing."

Um 143 were identified as that, "You

know what? We just We just can't do

those here for various reasons in the

city. Maybe there's a state law, federal

law, or some other law or ordinance that

doesn't allow this particular idea to

occur." But as of right now, uh

departments in total have identified 50

ideas that they're interested in in

reviewing. And so, as part of this

ongoing process through the budget year

this year into next year, departments

would be evaluating those ideas to see

just how feasible are they to implement

and what could be the potential

financial impact if we were actually to

implement those here in the city of

Green Bay.

Um for some organizations, we've had a

lot of success uh

in these insights in reviewing

uh some of these ideas. Um a county that

we're working with,

um they're really really large county,

but um they've so far in the first month

identified 1% of their budget, which

because they're a large organization,

that amounts to about $300 uh in their

budget. But, that's just over the first

month of reviewing some of these

results.

Um Tyler Technologies kind of rock star

right now is Collier County, Florida,

and they've been uh talked about in

various articles at ICMA and GFOA. Um

their first year, they were able to get

people to identify $50 million in

revenues and savings, and they're

gunning for I believe 150 over the next

uh couple of years. And so, and they've

been able to do this doing going through

the same process that Green Bay is going

through, identifying programs, costing

them out, rating them against their

priorities, and then looking at other

organizations to see what else is out

there in terms of how to deliver these

particular services.

Uh in your in when you get to the

interactive report as well, you can

click on at the bottom of this any one

of these programs to kind of see what

the makeup is of that. So, if I click on

it, it's going to pull up a little

window. So, you'll have the option to

kind of review these things as you go

through. And this kind of leads me to

this other [clears throat] view here.

Um this is just what we call we we call

um this is a view of kind of like, hey,

a program view review, right? So, we go

back to that snow removal

um example that we had at the beginning.

Uh now,

ideally, if if now if we were if we were

to ask the finance team like, you know,

what do we budget for our snow removal

program? One, I would hope they know

they have a snow removal program, right?

That they actually do this. But then two

is that they can look at information

within the database and say, "Well,

here's what we got. We It's about a $2.2

million

budgeted program. It has about 15

positions that support this program.

Right now, we're not showing that it

recovers any cost, but we'll review that

if that's the case. And it's being

funded from various funds, majority of

it being the general fund. We have

equipment replacement fund, storm water

utility, right? So, I can identify its

funding sources. I can look at some

information and say like, "Well, it's a

self-mandated program and it's We're the

only ones that can do it. And the

majority of the population benefits, and

it's about a steady level of service

that we provide every year this

particular program."

If I want to get into more detail, I can

look at, "Well, who provides this

service? Operator one, operator two?"

And then in terms of operating

expenditures, what goes towards that? We

have vehicle outlay, equipment rent. So,

I can still get down to that line item

level, but now I'm attributing it to an

actual program or service. And I can

look at this

for any program within the database that

we've helped create. Same thing, it

shows the alignment with the priorities.

Um and then I can kind of see that for

Green Bay, there's two snow removal

programs, one being housed in public

works, and also in parks, recreation,

and forestry as well.

So, again, I can look at the same

information and see

what makes this up.

And finally, the I would kind of close

out with um in terms of future

developments in terms of what we want to

continue to do uh with Green Bay and

other organizations that we work with

is, you know, this whole process isn't

just about giving more people work to do

and and developing these data sets. The

whole idea is that we want to uh be able

to connect everything from the funds

that you receive all the way to your

strategies, right? And so, what we have

is uh what we have with Green Bay is the

ability to see what funds were

identifying, the programs that we've

um identified, and then the strategies.

In that middle section there you see in

the blank box is metrics. That's kind of

our next phase of what we want to go

through going forward is where we will

start to look at performance measures,

things that you already have in place

and then provide any other

recommendations of performance measures,

KPIs, and also service level review.

Again, going back to that example of

what is our service level requirements

for these particular permits. And so we

want to be able to say we can measure

how much your budget is, what programs

you're providing, whether or not it's

working and how is it aligning with your

strategies and priorities going forward.

And in a future state, this is a kind of

a mind map look, but we would want to be

able to see your entire budget basically

on one screen. Again, moving from left

to right, I can see general fund,

utilities and enterprise tax increment

districts. I can see departments and

then I can see where programs are mapped

to priorities. Then I can just kind of

flip if I want to see what police is

doing, see where their funding sources

are coming from and where their

strategies are going or I can go

backwards if I want to see what's

invested in balance and equitable

community development, I can kind of

work my way back and say, "Here are the

departments and here's what their

funding sources are doing." So So that's

our kind of future development as we

move forward into 2028 and beyond is

that we want to

add in those metrics as well cuz ideally

we wanted it as like

not only do we know what we're doing, we

want to know whether it's working,

right? And so that's what we're going to

be working with the team

going forward, so.

Uh it's a lot of information, I know, as

as we do this, but it's real high level

in terms of what we've been able to

accomplish so far, but a lot of great

work has been done so far and I would

say over the last year we've seen some

some big strides in terms of like what

we've been able to see and Green Bay is

growing with with us as well as we

develop new tools and mechanisms to

evaluate the budget, so.

>> So how can we use the information to

save tax payer dollars this year?

Going into this next budget, can you

cite specifics that this data has

provided this information.

>> Yeah, I think how I'd answer that is if

you look at so the static report on page

seven, it talked about some of the

projects that we've already implemented

and some that we're looking in the near

future. I guess what I would caution

that the council with is I think I would

use this data and look at the reports to

look for things that we can implement

and I don't know how quickly we can

implement them to make actual budget

changes or budget cuts for next couple

weeks. But we could start making cost

savings on actual spend next year.

That's how I would view it. Cuz it might

be difficult to say here's an insight,

you know, let's, you know, cut X amount

of dollars because we know we can

implement it January 1, that'd be hard.

But maybe we could still go forward with

the idea and have actual [clears throat]

like spending savings next year if that

makes sense.

>> Well, I'm assuming the [clears throat]

directors have looked at this, correct?

>> That's correct.

>> And they

So, was it helpful to them

>> [clears throat]

>> as they were putting their budgets

together?

>> So,

>> And did it result in anything that's

going to save taxpayer dollars?

>> So, that would be on page seven of that

static report with some things that

they've already implemented or going to

implement and um

So, I believe

they were building the budget. I mean,

building budget starts like June, July,

August. I think directors were looking

at this closer to August. So, I think

most of their budget was already built,

but they have found insights they

believe they can implement in the near

term

to maybe help 2028. So, I don't know how

many actually impacted 2027. There's

probably a handful that did, but it's

going to be more of a long-term like 1

to 3 year implementation.

>> Okay. Thank you.

>> And I was I was just going to add to the

the insights um

piece of what we do at Priority Budget

is is a fairly new process for us. So,

as you saw in in this view, it was a

classic view of here's our quartiles and

here are the themes around what you

should do with the quartiles, programs

in those quartiles. Insights have really

kind of opened us up to like we now have

documented case studies where

organizations are doing things and so

that's the whole the point is to have

department directors say like, "Hey,

this city did this thing. Evaluate

whether or not that's a work for for

your organization." If it does, great.

What would be the financial impact? So,

in fairness to the departments in in

Green Bay, this is a new development for

us as well. And so, Green Bay is growing

with us as as we're doing this, too.

>> Just a natural question.

>> Oh, yeah. No, no, no. But, I think it's

important to understand like um that

when we first started this process, when

we were ResourceX, uh we didn't have

insights, right? We had we had like

again the quartiles and said, "You know,

have fun." Kind of kind of deal, all

right? But, now we're trying now we're

going to we're able to answer the

question of now what? What do we do with

this data now? Oh, we see what people

are doing with it.

>> Yeah, cuz I'm I guess I'm questioning. I

want to make sure that the directors

find it useful,

uh accurate, and that they can do

something with it moving forward.

>> Yeah.

>> So, I I think just Yeah, I think this is

really, really interesting and really

useful and the kind of [clears throat]

thing

that I think,

you know, even goes beyond just trying

to save money on a budget, but like how

to how do we think about what we're

doing as a city? And I I wasn't I didn't

have any say in the last strategic plan,

but I do think there are some things we

need to be critical of here as we look

at the data that we have and how it's

been defined. So, for example, when I'm

looking at

building construction permit, I'm just

using this as an example. It's most

aligned, right? It's the assumption here

is that it serves the majority of the

population. But, then I look at some of

the least aligned programs and rental

assistance

is deemed one of the least aligned. Is

that right? What is it called exactly?

Affordable housing assistance

is deemed one of the least aligned

programs. The idea that, you know, it

only serves less than 50% of the

population benefiting. Well, I think if

we think about that assumption,

which is I mean, we're we're having a

growing issue with folks who are

unhoused in this city. So, I think

actually affordable housing assistance,

if we look at it a different way,

probably helps more than all of the city

in the same way that building permitting

does.

So, you know, I I don't know if that's

how this was scored by people in the

city or if those are implicit

assumptions, but for me, I would also

think about using this for how we think

about strategic planning because the

idea that affordable housing assistance

is some of the least aligned programming

given what we stand for as a city and

even the strategic plan, that's

problematic to me, right? And so, I'm

not saying that that's a like this that

that's not a a critique. This whole

thing is really, really useful. I just

think we do have to look beyond just

numbers and think about what they

actually mean. Um and how we think about

integrating that into what we're doing.

So, that that's just I've just started

looking at this, so that's just one

example.

Um but but yeah. Um so, you know,

and I think you've kind of talked a

little bit about that process. I I just

think we've got to think

exactly what these numbers mean and how

we're going to use it, but I think this

is really, really useful. I don't know

what capacity you want to get this to

the whole council, but I think, you

know, they should have access to this as

well.

>> Yeah, that's the hope that they have

access to this, and the hope is that

they this

um interactive report and priority-based

budgeting in general is a little bit

easier to digest how we spend our

dollars. That's really what it comes

down to. And it's more like a thought

exercise on what we can do to make

changes going forward. Um but yeah, I I

agree with all of this. I think that

it's a fluid situation and our strategic

planning feeds into this, and when we

get information like that, we can kind

of go back and forth and make changes

that are

aligned with, I guess, the the

strategies of the Common Council and the

mayor going forward. And I anticipate

next year there'll be a like a a lot a

lot of input and thought into our

strategic plan going forward.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah, and then again, it's maybe it's

it's

you know, if affordable housing

assistance, based on this criteria, is

least aligned, then we got to rethink

our strategic plan.

>> Yeah, there's something missing.

>> Yeah.

>> Your your question and your comments um

is is kind of the reason why I I get

into this work because you start to have

conversations exactly like that, right?

And it highlights things. It opens up,

you know, things that maybe you hadn't

seen before. This is exactly why I get

into the work because it allows

decision makers to kind of take a peek

at something and say, "Hey, we should

evaluate this a little more." So, the

questions that you're asking, it's

exactly where we want to want to be and

why I've kind of done this work. So.

>> Okay.

>> Um I was going to kind of close it out

by saying our the airplane program that

we that we identified in the city. Cuz I

implemented this in that city before I

moved to Tyler Technologies. And when we

did our budget discussion, we did find

the airplane program. Like it got

identified. Uh it was $300,000 is what

we budgeted for it. It's like 1.5 FTEs

and some operating costs. And part of

like to your similar question is what we

were now able to identify is like, okay,

old plane, uh probably going to get

decommissioned here soon. What do we do

with the budget of 300,000, right? It

doesn't go away. Um but what do we do

with the 1.5 FTE now that they're not

going to be serving the airplane? What

do we do with the operational costs now

that they're not going towards fuel and

maintenance to a plane? We can now shift

those to a higher priority. In this

case, I believe that city invested

into their what they called their

real-time crime center, right? So, we

were able to uncover um things within

our own budget to say, "Hey, we should

invest more in this because

you know, the plane's going away, right?

We don't really need that anymore." And

it again, 1982, it's 40-year-old plane,

right? So, but that was the type of the

information that we were able to uncover

and that you guys, hopefully as you go

through this process, will also be able

to uncover. So.

Uh with that, uh that was my uh

presentation uh for you all. Uh again,

you have the static report that uh

staff was mentioning and then the

interactive report so you can kind of

get into some details as you review this

stuff. So.

>> Any other questions?

On the grant?

Okay. Our next meeting of the joint

finance and personnel committee is

November 12th, 2026. Motion for

adjournment.

>> Motion to adjourn.

>> Second.

>> All in favor?

>> Aye.

>> Aye.

>> Aye.

>> We're done.

It's this is going generate a lot of

questions.

>> Yeah, it should. That's what we wanted

to do.

>> [laughter]

>> I