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Publication Date: Wednesday, October 19, 2005 Menlo Park needs more money for budget survey
Menlo Park needs more money for budget survey
(October 19, 2005) By Rory Brown
Almanac Staff Writer
Menlo Park city staff is requesting an additional $23,500 to cover unexpected costs of the "your city/your decision" budget survey project.
The proposed increase will appear on the October 18 City Council meeting's consent calendar, giving the council the opportunity to approve the additional expenses without comment; the money would come from the general fund.
On May 10, the City Council approved a $62,280 agreement with San Francisco-based Community Focus, the group hired to conduct the budget outreach process with the city. With the additional costs, the total agreement with Community Focus would be $85,780.
The budget survey asks residents to take their best shot at adjusting programs and shortfalls to eliminate the city's projected $2.9 million deficit for the 2006-07 fiscal year.
Since the initial agreement was approved, adjustments have been made to the project due to input from the volunteer Budget Advisory Committee, and more work was needed than originally anticipated, said Assistant City Manager Audrey Seymour in a staff report.
Factors contributing to increased costs include the redesign of the budget mailer and survey, the addition of an interactive online version of the survey, and added reliance on Community Focus because of the city's "lack of dedicated public communications personnel," according to the staff report.
By the October 3 due date, more than 1,000 surveys were submitted by hand or mail, with several hundred more submitted online, according to the staff report. The survey results are scheduled to be released October 27.
The tally of surveys submitted by mail includes 400 that were completed by members of a control group, randomly contacted by telephone. They were asked to fill out a marked copy of the survey that was analyzed separately -- a method used to gauge the accuracy of the main survey's results.
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