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Citizen Input into the Budget
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By policy, the City provides a variety of significant opportunities for
interested citizens to influence and comment upon the City budget. The State of
Idaho Code requires cities to provide formal citizen comment opportunities.
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Citizen Comment to Departments and Agencies
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Departments actively seek and consider customer comments about services and
facilities. Activities to encourage and capture customer comments include
master planning projects (e.g., the Parks and Recreation Department�s master
plan update in 2003 and 2004), through customer questionnaires, and through
outreach on specific subjects. The Mayor�s Office maintains a �hotline� for
phone or email comment about City matters. The comments received from these
sources are informally considered by departments and agencies as they construct
their budget requests.
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Volunteer Boards, Committees and Commissions
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The Mayor recommends and the City Council approves appointments to volunteer
bodies to provide citizen participation in City processes. Those bodies provide
departments and agencies a venue and process to formally review and refine
staff plans and proposals, including budget requests. Volunteer organizations
include:
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Airport Commission |
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Library Board
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Parking Commission
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Parks and Recreation Board
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Planning and Zoning Commission
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Public Works Commission
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| Citizen Comment Forums
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| The City Council schedules open forum on the regular City
Council agenda, during the budget development process, to encourage comment
about priorities and issues that should be addressed in the budget. For the FY
2004 and 2005 2YB process, open citizen comment forums were scheduled on the
May 20 and June 3, 2003 City Council regular meeting agenda.
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| Public Hearing on the Preliminarily Approved Budget
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| Idaho State Code requires a public hearing be held prior
to adoption of the budget. Notice of the hearing must be published in the Idaho
Statesman (per the Code requirements) at least two times seven days apart.
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| For the FY 2004 and 2005 2YB process, a public hearing
was noticed and held on August 12, 2003. Because staff discovered that an
additional $118 thousand of property tax revenue was available, a second public
hearing was held on September 12, 2003.
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| A public hearing will be required to adopt the second
year of the 2YB (because Idaho Code does not recognize two year budgets.) That
hearing will be scheduled in late summer, 2004.
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