Newmarket budgeting game - educating the public

NRU
Sept. 13, 2017
By Sarah Niedoba

In an effort to promote better understanding of the budgeting process, Newmarket's financial services staff have created an online budgeting game, which challenges residents to allocate scarce resources among budget priorities.

According to financial services director Mike Mayes, the game is intended to educate residents on the difficult choices inherent in the creation of the town's annual budget. Participants are provided with a single "Town of Newmarket Budget Buck," which they can allocate to one of three priorities: developing community, maintaining service levels, or cultivating growth.

"Historically, we have had public information sessions on budgets and no one comes," Mayes told NRU. "We tried to look at different ways to get people engaged in the process, and this is what we came up with."

In asking residents to choose a single priority, Mayes says the game forces them to realize that the town does not have the capacity to fund everything that it would like to-it has to prioritize.

"As a town, we have limited resources, but a lot of things that have to be funded," says Mayes. "You have to make tough decisions, and this game highlights that for residents." The engagement process also allows staff to gather information about which budget priorities residents care most about, something Ward 1 councillor Tom Vegh says can be hard to get a handle on otherwise.

"What we've found is that with increased social media use, people aren't coming out to public meetings the way that they used to," Vegh told NRU. "They're much more likely just to say something on social media, which can be difficult to track. So a game like this allows us to collect information on where they would like council to prioritize funding."

While Vegh says that the online game will provide council with a better understanding of what constituents want, Newmarket Taxpayers Advocacy Group president Teena Bogner is skeptical, calling the initiative a "feel good exercise." "It is unknown whether the feedback provided during the game will, indeed, be implemented by town staff and council," Bogner said in an email to NRU. "Kudos to staff for trying creative ways to engage taxpayers, but we question whether council is sincerely soliciting citizen feedback."

Vegh says that, regardless of how the responses are used by council, the game has value as a way to educate the public about the difficulties of the budgeting process. "We want people to understand that when you fund one thing, there's less money to fund something else-you can't ask for the world," he says. Staff will present the preliminary draft operating and capital budgets to a special meeting of the committee of the whole on October 15.