Three improved budgeting techniques;

              further explained in the next article.
Zero base budgeting, a more com­plex
system, has been successfully
used by Wilmington, Delaware.
Wilmington has achieved outstand­ing
results by means of (1) a con­scious
effort to reduce personnel,
(2) the implementation of an
improved budget technique, and
(3) a management emphasis on
operational efficiency. David Single­ton
of Wilmington has said, "The
city must be realistic and blunt as to
its ability to fund the demands of its
Three
improved
budgeting
technique*
A government official who wants to
strengthen his unit's financial
management has a wide variety of
planning and budgeting systems to
choose from. The three planning and
budgeting techniques which follow
illustrate this variety. More impor­tantly,
they demonstrate how sound
planning and budgeting enhance the
effectiveness of overall management
and how they can contribute to
substantial cost savings. Each of
these systems:
• Improves the quantity and
quality of information about govern­ment
operations, providing a sound
basis for decision-making.
• Facilitates operations reviews,
enabling officials to update pro-constituents.
For survival the city
must keep taxes within reason."
Wilmington's experience with ZBB is
further explained in the article which
follows.
The taxpayer revolt has provided a
warning to local governments across
the country. Glenn Jackson of the
Anti-tax National Taxpayers Union
repeats the point. "Jarvis Cann and
the successful voter referendum to
roll back property taxes in California
will unleash a massive wave of
similar proposals across the country.
grams in order to meet changing
priorities and to increase cost effec­tiveness.
D Provides a sound basis for long
range planning. If funding shortfalls
are foreseen, officials have time to
redirect resources, alter service
levels, or increase revenues, avoiding
"crash" program reductions.
Below are descriptions of each of
the three systems:
Contingency Planning in Greenville
Contingency planning helps officials
to make the hard choice between
changing tax levels and meeting the
expectations of citizens. Contingen­cy
planning is a long range system
that estimates revenues over a five-year
period and then compares the
alternative expenditures required to
provide service.
To implement the system, Green­ville,
S.C. set up a task force of
internal and external consultants to
measure the widening gap between
expected revenues and expenses for
the given period. Since the mayor
and city council wanted to minimize
tax increases over the five years, the
task force was instructed to find
People have reached the breaking
point."
The message is clear. A balance
will have to be struck between
demand for more and the ability to
pay for it. Improved management
budgeting and control process will
either be used by public officials or
forced on them. The tools for exam­ining
alternatives, setting priorities,
and implementing those activities as
effectively as possible are available.
All that is needed is a commitment
to use them. a
ways to close the gap by making city
operations more productive. Accord­ingly,
the task force:
• Prepared a detailed five-year
general fund forecast for revenues,
expenditures, and fund balances.
• Formalized the service objec­tives
of the mayor and city council,
consistent with locally generated
revenues.
• Surveyed citizens on their per­ceptions
of the quality of city
services.
• Analyzed city operations to
identify productivity and cost sav­ings
opportunities. These were
grouped into three categories, based
on the time required for implemen­tation
and the cost of the level of
service:
—Priority I Improvements: quick
implementation with no signifi­cant
impact on service levels,
(e.g., cutbacks in unnecessary
overtime).
—Priority II Improvements: four to
six months implementation time,
but little impact on services (e.g.,
departmental consolidation).
—Priority III Improvements: long-term
implementation, requiring
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