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City Council Meeting Retreat Tuesday, February 18, 2015 Page 29 Mr. Rapp suggested the participants brainstorm that challenge now. Councilmember McGehee noted in the budget process early on, there could be a reminder that the budget was based on survey expectations and apply it across the board or tie to specific budget allocations. Councilmember Etten stated that he would need to look at the survey within that framework and whether enough information was available to the average taxpayer filling out the survey to determine which programs were core, vital or preferred for the entire community with the City Council and staff simply serving as a pass through for those community preferences. At this point, Councilmember Etten opined that the community survey asked relatively broad questions and ques- tioned if that broad information could be boiled down to actual reductions or in- creases on an item by item or department by department approach. Councilmem- ber Etten suggested a goal for this indicator may be to take the more generic in- formation and create a specific document to meet that goal. Mayor Roe noted that the group struggled mightily with that during the last budg- et cycle. Councilmember Laliberte agreed, but opined citizens were not necessarily going to indicate or rank things until they became aware of problem areas (e.g. no awareness of road conditions until they're bad). Mayor Roe suggested the community survey question may be whether or not a re- spondent was satisfied with or not satisfied with the way the City was allocating resources. Councilmember Etten opined that the questions could get specific in some areas; however, some specificity was not available (e.g. performance of a particular staff member) if the survey was going to be used as an instrument to drive the budget. Councilmember Etten questioned if a respondent would have the necessary depth of information to make such a decision. Councilmember McGehee opined that her perception of the last community sur- vey was that citizens felt strongly about roads and keeping pathways clean year- round, and while those were not quantifiable when doing a budget, they came up and were of note in addressing budget priorities from a broad, not more narrow approach. Mr. Rapp suggested the target was: Resource allocation reflects citizen priori- ties, without a percentage being listed; at which point the City made the deci- sion based on the most current data available from various information sources.