Grassroots Commitment to Addressing Budget Shortfalls
Amanda Trosten-Bloom , Lynn Pollard , Margaret Brown
2003
Annotation: In the spring of 2003, the Office of Finance in the City and County of Denver initiated a City-wide inquiry to discover and transport financial best practices, and to identify revenue-generating opportunities across the City. This initiative was somewhat unique because it was one of the first inquiries on record explicitly aimed at cost savings. Attempting to build grassroots commitment to addressing an estimated $70MM budget shortfall, a team of 200 people were trained to conduct 600 face-to-face interviews with City employees, local businesses and community members. They then came together in a one-day mini-summit to articulate best practices, envision a stable financial future, and design and initiate individual, department-level and cross-agency cost-savings and revenue-generating projects.
Outcomes of this initiative included:
--Ongoing voluntary suggestions (up to 50 e-mails per day)
--Increased employee commitment to controversial cost savings measures that were already under way
--Consolidation of services to reduce duplication
--Consolidation of agencies from leased space to City-owned space
--Downsizing of fleet services ($370,000 savings)
--Reduced building security ($358,000 per year savings)
--Development of a new incentive retirement program ($1.5MM per year savings)
Contacts:
Lynn Pollard
Pollard Consulting, 303-780-0465, lynn@pollardconsulting.com
Amanda Trosten-Bloom
Corporation for Positive Change, 303-279-2240, amanda@positivechange.org
Margaret Brown
Manager of Budget and Finance
City and County of Denver, 720-913-5512, margaret.browne@ci.denver.co.us
Resource Files:
Interview guide and Design (doc )
Timed Agenda for AI Summit (doc )
|
|
