Priority budgeting should bene?t town of Chapel Hill

Despite initial confusion surrounding Chapel Hill’s priority budgeting process, local officials said they are confident the new system will better involve the community and specify the funding goals of the council.

At Saturday’s annual Town Council Planning Retreat, newly-appointed Councilwoman Sally Greene questioned the clarity of the priority budgeting objectives.

The budget system lists 25 objectives — ranging from community to safety. The council prioritized each of these categories on Jan. 9.

An additional 88 programs, such as sustainability and building permits, fall under these objectives.

Each program was matched with the primary objective it represented, said Chapel Hill Business Management Director Ken Pennoyer on Saturday.

But Greene worried that some programs, such as the Chapel Hill Public Library, fall under multiple objectives.

“I think there could probably be a richer way to understand how programs and broader topics align,” Greene said.

Chapel Hill Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt said it is important to not place too much meaning on the rankings. He said there will be lots of changes through June, when the council votes on the budget.

“There is nothing we are considering in our budget that is unimportant,” he said.

He said some elements of priority budgeting will require time for the council to fully understand, a thought echoed by Pennoyer.

“I think we’re still in the process of explaining the system and how it works,” he said. “It’s going to take a little patience on everyone’s part.”

Pennoyer said the next step will be to show how the objectives ranked by the council match up with the town’s programs — information ­­­he will present to the council on Feb. 27.

He said priority budgeting will make it easier to know what the council and community consider as needing the most attention.

“(Last year,) we didn’t have a lot of structure that told us which programs were high priority and low priority,” he said. “In doing (priority budgeting), we get better direction from the council about their priorities.”

And now that Chapel Hill is facing a possible $880,000 budget deficit in the upcoming fiscal year, Pennoyer said having the council’s priorities would make cuts easier.

“It gets harder from year to year because our costs are growing faster than our revenue. If forced to make cuts, we’re doing so in the priorities of the town council,” he said.

Greene said she is skeptical priority budgeting will affect the town’s final budget, but she does think it will better engage the community .

“The advantage is that there is greater community participation,” she said.

Contact the desk editor at city@dailytarheel.com.