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Regular City Council Meeting Monday,August 08, 2011 Page 34 Mayor Roe suggested that changes not be implemented in the middle of this cycle, but that lessons continue to be learned as the process proceeded. Councilmember Pust reiterated her question on how Mayor Roe would like to see individual Councilmembers ask their questions; if he wanted them addressed be- fore through e-mail with Mr. Miller, or brought forward at the next meeting. Mayor Roe opined that it would be more efficient to bring any questions to staff before the next meeting; and further opined that the level of information provided in the most recent General Ledger report from staff added up to previous informa- tion in the packet. If individual Councilmember felt additional information beyond that was necessary, he asked that they request that information and if the City Council majority felt it was necessary, that request could be made of staff. Moving forward, Mayor Roe suggested that this information would allow the City Council to see where differences occurred from year to year and in which catego- ry, and any apparent causes of that difference. Mayor Roe opined that this process had allowed the most transparent budget process to-date, and the problem was in comparing that data from year to year, as it had not been organized in this priority ranking in past years. Mayor Roe clarified that staff was not saying the information was not available, but that it was not organized in this specific format in past years to this current budget process; and not done by these particular broad program categories. Finance Director Chris Miller advised that, while not being privy at this time to the actual information provided by Mr. Kysylyczyn to the City Council, he again reviewed how expenditures are tracked differently than that used for the program- based budgeting approach. Mr. Miller advised that over 150 programs had been evaluated over the past six (6) months; and while it was accurate to say that in- formation for past years on a program by program basis was not available since costs were not tracked accordingly, he wasn't sure of what value that information would serve for the City Council. If the information distributed by Mr. Kysylyc- zyn was that cost information, Mr. Miller advised that they would not tell Coun- cilmembers —or the public—program information as it was not how staff tracked that information for budget purposes; which the City Council had concurred with up to this point. Mr. Miller opined that the better way to equate how resources were allocated for programs was in the City Council's priority rankings; which was different than provided for in past budget cycles. Mayor Roe concurred, noting that the differences were in prioritization budgeting melding with recommendations coming forward. Councilmember Willmus, in addressing the level of detail and whether it was adequate, referenced an example for the "Recreation Program Coordinator" posi- tion and his interest in determining how much revenue that position generated for the City.