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Regular City Council Meeting Monday,April 7, 2014 Page 10 in hearing ideas from the Commission about the current budget process, specifi- cally methods and techniques related to sustainability of the City's infrastructure and as part of the CIP as ideas or Councilmember McGehee noted that ohad been plan for maintenance and repairs. an ongoing frustration of hers as the City Council approved things in a piecemeal fashion without an overall review of how those items would fit together and with- out a long-term impact evaluation. In recognizing the statutory requirements for the City to abide under, Mayor Roe noted that the City didn't entirely get to set its own agenda or budget rules, but were creatures of state government with limits, responsibilities and requirements. Mayor Roe suggested the starting point for the Commission would be to learn about municipal government by becoming familiar with those statutory require- ments and the specific sections on how city government works. Mayor Roe sug- gested various resources, including the League of Minnesota Cities and staff, opining that a basic understanding of what could and could not be done at the lo- cal level in adopting an annual budget would be a good foundation, and the timing of that process for setting a Preliminary and Final Budget, and the requirements that went with that. Mayor Roe also suggested that the Commission review how other cities pursued their budget process, and while not expecting the Commission to review all 800 cities in Minnesota within the next two weeks, he suggested they use those com- parative resources as issues, ideas and questions came up, as a good way to vet things. Regarding making the budget process accessible to the public, Mayor Roe sug- gested the Commission consider online tools, such as one that could allow a resi- dent to plug into the finance section of the website and determine how a particular service or program would affect their personal tax bill and what it meant to them personally as well as to the City budget. Mayor Roe opined that this could pro- vide an interactive way to determine consequences of City Council actions, such as used in simplified format as a workbook on federal budgets; and allowing in- teresting ways to get the community involved and having a better understanding of municipal budgets and tools they could use to become more informed. For clarification purposes, Mayor Roe addressed the history of the creation of the twenty-year capital improvement program (CIP) created over several years by a subcommittee of staff and Councilmembers to address long-term CIP and infra- structure needs, with an initial report issued in 2011 and a subsequent report is- sued in 2012 providing the rest of the picture. Mayor Roe noted that these docu- ments were available from staff or online; and he offered to make his 2013 draft update available as well, as a former member of the subcommittee process.