Palo Alto Involves The Community in Strengthening Its Bottom Line

摘要

For the past two years, the City of Palo Alto has struggled to address revenue shortfalls resulting from the deep recession in Silicon Valley. Specifically, the city faced the following challenge: How to engage employees, labor unions and citizens in understanding the complexities of city finance and identifying and supporting budget solutions? Palo Alto faced a structural budget deficit. The city's long-range financial plan indicated that revenues would not keep pace with projected expenses over the next decade. In 2002-03, the city had to confront a $12 million deficit. Furthermore, the city council faced an additional 2003-04 shortfall of $10 million (consisting of $7 million in recession-related revenue shortfalls, plus $3 million in anticipated state take-aways of additional city revenues).