The 2019 budget consultations were the fourth to be conducted by the Winnipeg Office of Public Engagement. The consultations consisted of a telephone survey, a pop-up event, a priorities survey, a Prioritization and Allocation Survey, and a workshop.
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Problems and Purpose
The City of Winnipeg runs an annual budget consultation to help prepare its annual budget. The 2019 budget faced a projected tax supported operating budget shortfall of $85.9 million.
Background History and Context
Building on the earlier success of mass participation in City planning in the form of OurWinnipeg, the City launched public budget consultations in 2014 to solicit and compile feedback from Winnipeggers into city budget and planning priorities. This work was contracted out to a consulting firm (MNP) which was generally perceived to have conducted an ineffective process with few shifts in spending as a result of community input. The following year another consulting firm conducted a similar exercise which included a series of town hall meetings and an online survey with the results ultimately not reported to council or released to the public. This rocky start to formal budget consultations in the city caught the attention of the incoming Mayor Brian Bowman (assumed office at the end of 2014), who had made a campaign promise to improve public consultation for both the budget and other projects. To this end, Bowman established an Office of Public Engagement in 2015 with a mandate to support all City activities and projects through public consultation and engagement.
Similar to the 2016, 2017, and 2018 budget consultation processes, the City of Winnipeg continued to adjust their consultation efforts. The 2018 engagement process recommended the addition of a more deliberative element, which was added.
In addition, a 2018 State of the Infrastructure Report highlighted a nearly $7 billion infrastructure deficit which the budgetary planning process needs to address.
Organizing, Supporting, and Funding Entities
The process was organized by the Office of Public Engagement. The Office of Public Engagement and the budget consultation process were funded through regular operations of the City of Winnipeg.
Participant Recruitment and Selection
Recruitment was supported in a manner similar to 2018, with the City promoting participation through newsprint, website, and social media advertising. All citizens were invited to participate.
The telephone survey portion of the consultation used quota sampling to produce a representative sample.
Methods and Tools Used
Similar to previous years, there were multiple different methods used to solicit information: a telephone survey, pop-up events which provided some information and invited citizens to contribute their ideas on post-it notes, a workshop that allowed discussion and gathered ideas, online tools that included a priorities survey and a Prioritization and Allocation Survey. The online tools were supported by a website.
The staff survey was not repeated for the 2019 budget planning process.
The telephone survey used quota sampling to produce a representative sample.
The Prioritization and Allocation Survey was an innovation and consisted of three different activities. The first was a straight prioritization exercise, the second related to funding strategies and the third had participants allocate $144 (the average homeowner’s monthly property tax bill) in fictional spending money to various city departments. This was the first time this was tried.
What Went On: Process, Interaction, and Participation
The trade-off elements in the Prioritization and Allocation survey allowed the city for the first time to get a better sense of relative allocations. The areas that received the highest support were public works, public transit, and community services.
The more conventional exercises saw similar priorities emerge with transit, street maintenance and city planning again emerging as the top areas.
The workshop yield a range of ideas but citizens had difficulty with the trade-off portion of the exercise. Importantly those present also indicated that the citizen survey was not necessarily reflective of their understanding of their priorities.
Influence, Outcomes, and Effects
As with previous City of Winnipeg budget consultations, the results were gathered and presented to the administration and elected officials to help inform development of the budget. Similar to previous years, the key priorities that emerged were: public transit, street maintenance, and city planning. Community livability also saw an increase in support, with economic development being comparatively less supported than previous years. These simple counts do not necessarily reflect the priorities of Winnipeggers at large however.
Analysis and Lessons Learned
As with previous exercises, the results of the online tools and in-person feedback are not statistically representative and thus the approach of the budget consultations continues to be neither deliberative nor scientifically valid. As a result, the resources being put into the consultations are producing comparatively little value. The 2019 budget consultation process is the fourth such event and it is not clear from the public reports that there is significant value being generated.
Also the organizers noted that the deliberative element (the workshop) had a had low turnout despite a large effort to promote the event. Thus while several respondents had requested such a deliberative element, it is not clear that there is a larger demand and/or a culture of deliberative budget planning in Winnipeg.
See Also
Workshop
Winnipeg Budget Consultations
Winnipeg Budget Consultation 2018
References
External Links
https://www.winnipeg.ca/interhom/Budget/2019BudgetEngagement/default.stm
