Statement of Purpose: The purpose of this document is to outline a recommendation to the Sunnyvale City Council for a procedure for conducting a policy review of proposed Capital Plan and Service Level budget cuts. This recommendation is presented by Council members Walker and Fowler, who were tasked by the Council to review the issues involved and make such a recommendation.

Report in brief: It is recommended that the Council set policy for project and service level cuts by adopting specific criteria to be used to evaluate the value of projects and services to the residents of the city. These criteria should be adopted through formal actions by the Council after public hearings. Separate sets of criteria should be adopted for projects and for services, and they may be adopted at different points in time. Once those criteria have been adopted, discussion of individual projects or services can take place in the context of those criteria. The Council can make its opinions known to the City Manager through these discussions and give him guidance in formulating his budget recommendations. The normal budget adoption process can then provide an opportunity for public input and discussion of the specific projects and service levels the City Manager recommends for change.

Discussion: Both Council members Fowler and Walker felt it was important for the Council to approach potential budget cuts from a policy perspective and to avoid debating individual projects or services outside of a policy context. The Council’s job is to set policy and then monitor the city’s adherence to that policy. Both Walker and Fowler felt that this was the primary role and duty of the Council in this situation.

It was noted that the City Manager has enunciated a set of criteria he is using in order to evaluate projects and formulate his recommendations. Fowler and Walker noted that those criteria are actually proposed statements of policy, and that the Council has a duty to evaluate those proposals and adopt, revise, or reject them. Both Walker and Fowler noted that there are further criteria each wanted to suggest to augment the ones proposed by the City Manager. Fowler and Walker agree that the Council should conduct a public hearing as soon as possible where the Council and the public can debate these criteria. Once a final set of criteria have been adopted, the City Manager will have the policy guidance he needs to make a recommendation that would be acceptable to the Council. Also, the Council will have a way to measure the quality and suitability of the City Manager’s recommendations.

Walker and Fowler noted that the criteria for capital project cuts might not necessarily be the same as those for service level cuts. For this reason, they recommend two separate public hearings and two separate debates about criteria for project cuts and criteria for service level cuts. They should be scheduled in such a way that their conclusions are available in time to help the City Manager make his recommendations.

They noted that the public debate over the criteria should take place soon so that the public has input at the beginning of the budget recommendation process. The public debate over the actual recommendations of the City Manager should happen later on, and should line up with the normal timetable for public input on budget recommendations. In this way, the Council can separate the policy setting debate from the debate over the actual project and service level cuts. The question about a particular project or service will become "how well does it fit the criteria we’ve established" instead of debating the particular merits or flaws a project or service may have.

Recommendation: Council members Fowler and Walker recommend that the Mayor add an action item to the next Council Meeting Agenda for the adoption of a set of criteria to use to evaluate capital projects for retention, reduction, or elimination from the city budget. Council members Walker and Fowler further recommend that an additional action item be added to a future Council Meeting Agenda for the adoption of criteria to be used to evaluate Service levels for retention or reduction. They recommend that individual project or service recommendations only be discussed after appropriate criteria have been adopted and then only in the context of those criteria. Finally, they recommend that the City Manager’s budget proposals be evaluated for their adherence to the adopted criteria, and that the Council monitor those proposals for compliance with policy.

Return to RTC# 03-115