Public radio from Western Michigan University 102.1 NPR News | 89.9 Classical WMUK
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

City Seeks Public's Two Cents on Budget Cuts

WMUK

The City of Kalamazoo is making a special effort to interest people in next year’s city budget.

Those discussions usually don’t draw crowds to city hall. But Kalamazoo expects its 2016 budget to fall about three million dollars short. And it says it needs to hear from people on which services they value most.

One place the city plans to collect input is on a newly launched website, ImagineKalamazoo.com.

Kalamazoo Public Library employee Farrell Howe has agreed to check it out and give her personal opinion. She sits at the computer in her office.

“All right, got a nice little welcome sign, got a Facebook page and an email,” she says as she browses the page, which offers surveys and questions on Kalamazoo’s quality of life. One section of the website even asks for input on the Allied Paper Superfund site.

Howe signs up for an account and fills out a couple of surveys. Then she finds the budgeting exercise.

“Oh, this is fun. You have a thousand dollars of city funds. How would you divvy up the money? Okay, I click allocate funds to see what the options are,” she says.

Parks, transit, culture, the economy, the environment and public safety: Each makes an appearance in the options. Howe gives half of her imaginary $1000 city budget to the “safe community” fund. She puts most of the rest of it toward a “strong and well-planned community.”

A few blocks away on the Kalamazoo Mall, Caffe Casa co-owner John Beebe has also agreed to try the website. He types in the address at a computer behind the counter. His impression is less favorable. Beebe doesn’t see much use in dividing up the pretend thousand-dollar budget.

“They should maybe better ask, if you had $50,000 of things to buy and you were only given $10,000 how would you spend the money?”

And Beebe says he doubts his input will make a difference.

“When it comes down time to make a decision, they’ll do whatever they want,” he says.

But Kalamazoo City Manager Jim Ritsema says the results do matter to the city.

“This is a serious exercise,” he says, adding that the city has very specific plans for the Imagine Kalamazoo website.

Kalamazoo won’t estimate its exact 2016 budget until this summer. But Ritsema says the city expects its budget to fall $6 million short over the next five years. Half of that falls on next year’s budget. Ritsema says Kalamazoo can’t avoid cuts. But he says it should avoid making them indiscriminately.

“What you’re saying there is when you suggest that is we’re just going to make everything mediocre. We’re not going to look at the value of a program,” he says.

Instead, the city is making a list of every program it offers.  Next it plans to weigh each program’s value. Favorable public comment – from the website, for example – is one factor giving a program more weight. In the final ranking, Ritsema says the least-needed services should fall to the bottom.

“Either they weren’t – they didn’t have much impact or they only impacted a smaller group or there’s other providers of that out in the community,” he says.

But Ritsema acknowledges that even the lowest-ranked program probably matters to someone.

“Then it becomes a question of recognizing that, is there another way of providing that service, so they still get that level of service or that service, but maybe in a different way,” he says.

He says the city knows its usual budget process feels less than accessible to many people, and he says ImagineKalamazoo.com is part of an effort to change that. He adds that the city also plans to hold a number of community meetings, the first ones later this month.

Back at the library, Howe has finished her tour of the website. Aside from a few design issues, she says she likes it. But she adds that it could use a page explaining its purpose.

“This seems fun and lighthearted in a way, and I don’t know if people are going to make that connection that what they’re inputting here is really going to be used,” she says.

Ritsema says the city plans to gather data from the website through the spring, and to finish its program ranking “later in the summer.” Kalamazoo will make final decisions on its 2016 budget early next year.
 

Sehvilla Mann joined WMUK’s news team in 2014 as a reporter on the local government and education beats. She covered those topics and more in eight years of reporting for the Station, before becoming news director in 2022.
Related Content