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CC - ACTION ITEM: (1) Presentation on Priority-Driven Budgeting; (2) Approval of Demographics for Civic Assembly as Recommended by the Civic Assembly Ad Hoc Subcommittee; and (3) Other Direction to the City Manager as Deemed Appropriate.
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Meeting Date: January 12, 2026
Contact Person/Dept: Elizabeth Shavelson/Finance Department
Phone Number: (310) 253-5865
Fiscal Impact: Yes [] No [X] General Fund: Yes [] No []
Attachments: Yes [X] No []
Public Notification: (Email) Meetings and Agendas - City Council (01/07/2026); (Email) Ongoing Topics - Fiscal and Budget Issues (01/07/2026)
Department Approval: Lisa Soghor, Chief Financial Officer (01/06/2026)
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RECOMMENDATION
Staff recommends the City Council (1) receive a presentation on priority-driven budgeting; (2) approve the demographics for Civic Assembly as recommended by the Civic Assembly Ad Hoc Subcommittee; and (3) provide other direction to the City Manager as deemed appropriate.
BACKGROUND
Priority-Driven Budgeting
The Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA), founded in 1906, represents public finance officials throughout the United States and Canada. The association's more than 28,000 members are comprised of federal, state/provincial, and local finance officials deeply involved in planning, financing, and implementing governmental operations. GFOA's mission is to advance excellence in public finance. As part of its mission, GFOA establishes industry standards and best practices and administers an award program for excellence in financial reporting and budget presentation.
GFOA’s Distinguished Budget Presentation Awards Program includes 24 criteria for award eligibility including identification of strategic goals, financial plans and priorities. In order to be eligible for the award, agencies must include a coherent statement of organization-wide, strategic goals and strategies that address long-term concerns and issues and provide a budget message that articulates priorities and issues for the upcoming year.
To respond to the changing needs, desires and interests of the residents of Culver City and address the GFOA strategic planning requirement, the City Council regularly reviews and adopts strategic goals to guide the budget and planning process. The City Council met in November 2023 and February 2024 to discuss the City’s strategic goals for 2024-2029 to build on the prior strategic plan and provide direction on how to focus attention and resources throughout the budget process and over the next five years. On November 13, 2023, the City Council adopted the following strategic goals for 2024-2029:
• Ensure long-term financial stability
• Enhance mobility and transportation
• Improve housing and homeless services
• Promote diversity, equity and inclusion
• Improve and maintain public infrastructure and community spaces
• Advance environmental sustainability and climate action
• Promote public safety
• Provide high quality public services
• Increase community engagement
In February 2024, the City Council held a Special Strategic Planning Meeting to facilitate further discussion of the City’s Adopted Strategic Goals to help inform the budget process including strategies to help departments align their work plan with the Adopted Strategic Goals. As part of the City’s existing budget process, departments present their proposed work plans and identify the primary and secondary strategic goal(s) to be advanced by each proposed work plan priority in early March and receive feedback from the City Council and the community. Departments’ annual work plans are formally adopted by City Council as part of the annual budget.
The City has met the GFOA criteria and received the award for Distinguished Budget Presentation every year since it first applied in the late 1980s.
As the City prepares to launch the budget process for Fiscal Year 2026-2027, the City will need to address the City’s structural deficit, plan to replenish the City’s Contingency Reserve, and allocate resources to advance its strategic goals and address priorities. It is recommended that the City consider delving deeper into strategic planning and prioritization through priority-driven budgeting.
Civic Assembly
On June 9, 2025, the City Council approved the Adopted Budget for Fiscal Year 2025-2026 which included $250,000 for budget outreach consultant services and requested that staff return to Council for more direction regarding how the funding would be spent.
On October 27, 2025, the City Council considered conducting a civic assembly to develop strategies to increase public participation in the budget process. By majority vote, Council authorized conducting a civic assembly to consider how the public wants to be engaged or participate in the City’s budget process, placed a cap on the budget for the civic assembly of $250,000 to include all City costs and directed staff to solicit proposals from organizations to develop and conduct a civic assembly.
On November 10, 2025, the City Council received an update on staff’s efforts to solicit proposals for a consultant to develop and create a civic assembly and, by majority vote, established the Civic Assembly Ad Hoc Subcommittee (Ad Hoc Subcommittee) and appointed Mayor Puza and Vice Mayor Fish to evaluate proposals and make a recommendation to the City Council.
On December 1, 2025, the City Council approved of a professional services agreement with the Center for New Democratic Processes (CNDP) to develop and conduct a civic assembly in an amount not-to-exceed $230,000 as recommended by the Civic Assembly Ad Hoc Subcommittee.
DISCUSSION
Priority-Driven Budgeting
Although the City’s budget regularly meets the GFOA’s criteria for budget presentation which includes providing a coherent statement of organization-wide strategic goals and strategies, additional strategic planning, goal setting and prioritization are recommended as part of the budget process for Fiscal Year 2026-2027 to ensure that the City’s budget reflects the priorities and values of the City Council and the community and inform the City Manager’s plan to address the City’s ongoing operating budget deficit and replenish the City’s contingency reserve.
As part of its mission to advance excellence in public finance, GFOA regularly publishes research papers on a variety of public finance topics. In 2011, GFOA published Anatomy of Priority-Driven Budget Process which recommends priority-driven budgeting as “a common sense, strategic alternative to incremental budgeting” to address “financial challenges posed by the new normal of relatively flat or declining revenue and upward cost pressures.”
According to GFOA,
The philosophy of priority-driven budgeting is that resources should be allocated according to how effectively a program or service achieves the goals and objectives that are greatest value to the community. In a priority-drive approach, a government identifies its most important strategic priorities, and then, through a collaborative, evidence-based process, ranks programs or services according to how well they align with the priorities. The government then allocates funding in accordance with the ranking.
Implementing a priority-drive budget process would enable the City to build upon its previously Adopted Strategic Goals for 2024-2029 and better prioritize, plan and evaluate its expenditures. The City’s Adopted Strategic Goals are broad and ambitious and are currently presented as a whole, without prioritization or ranking. The Adopted Strategic Goals are currently applied to the City’s work plan tasks and capital improvement projects. Ranking the strategic goals will provide evaluative criteria to the City’s existing and proposed services and programs.
GFOA outlines an eight-step process for implementing priority-driven budgeting. However, to meet the budget development deadlines established in the City’s Charter and incorporate priority-driven budgeting into the development process for Fiscal Year 2026-2027, staff recommends incorporating a modified version focusing on defining priorities and priority results. A more robust process could be implemented in future budget cycles.
The initial steps include identifying available resources, identifying priorities, and defining priority results. Council is asked to consider incorporating some of these priority-driven budget practices into the budget process for Fiscal Year 2026-2027. If directed by Council, additional aspects of priority-driven budgeting may be implemented in future budget years.
The proposed priority-driven budget process for Fiscal Year 2026-2027 will differ from the City’s existing budget development process and may alter the nature and/or timing of the additional budget-related meetings recently approved the City Council.
The proposed process will begin with a budget priority study session to be conducted as part of a Special City Council Meeting in February. The meeting will enable the Council to reexamine the City’s nine strategic goals and develop priorities and priority results to be used as the basis for the City’s resource allocation decisions and planning efforts.
Following the budget priority study session, the City Manager will hold a series of community meetings on the City’s budget priorities at various locations throughout the City in February and March and receive community input. At the conclusion, the City Manager will present the results of the community budget priority meetings to the City Council.
The priorities and priority results identified would then be used to craft the City Manager’s Proposed Budget to be delivered to the City Council during the May 11, 2026 Regular City Council Meeting.
Civic Assembly Demographics
The staff has been working with the Ad Hoc Subcommittee and CNDP to develop the final scope and schedule of the Civic Assembly process including establishing the demographic criteria for the Civic Assembly participants.
Civic Assembly Demographics
The CNDP aims to convene a civic assembly consisting of 30 participants for 45 hours of study and deliberation. To launch the project, CNDP will mail thousands of flyers to Culver City residents describing the Civic Assembly process and asking recipients to indicate their interest and availability to participate in the assembly and identify their personal demographic information. The 30-person assembly will be designed to mirror the demographic criteria established by the City Council and will ultimately be selected via a sortition or lottery process.
After careful consideration of the City’s existing demographic data from the U.S. Census, the American Community Survey, the California Health Interview Survey and other sources, the Ad Hoc Subcommittee recommends that the panel reflect the City’s demographic composition identified in the currently available demographic data for Culver City. A detailed breakdown of the proposed demographic targets for the Civic Assembly is provided in Attachment 1.
If approved by the City Council, CNDP will use these criteria to select a panel of participants from the residents who express interest in participating.
Based on their extensive experience conducting civic assemblies and other deliberative processes, CNDP recommends compressing the timeline of the City’s Civic Assembly to maximize engagement and information retention, minimize the attrition rate, and avoid convening during the summer months when many participants are likely to have limited availability due to changing seasonal schedules, childcare and other responsibilities, travel plans and other commitments. A compressed timeline is also aimed to allow participants to engage in the current budget process for Fiscal Year 2026-2027 to the extent possible, deliberate in a timely manner, and develop recommendations to increase public participation in the budget process for Fiscal Year 2027-2028 that can be considered for funding as part of the Fiscal Year 2026-2027 Budget.
Representatives from the CNDP will be available at the meeting to answer questions regarding the demographics and schedule.
FISCAL ANALYSIS
There is no fiscal impact associated with the recommended action.
If Council directs staff to incorporate priority-driven budgeting processes into the budget development process for Fiscal Year 2026-2027, additional expenditures may be required including but not limited to consultant services to facilitate a Council study session, advertising, facility rental fees and overtime. Funding for these expenditures is available the Adopted Budget for Fiscal Year 2025-2026 in Account No. 10116100.910200 (Non-Departmental - Appropriated Reserve).
ATTACHMENTS
1. 2026-01-12_ATT_Culver City Civic Assembly Proposed Demographic Targets
recommended action
MOTION
That the City Council:
1. Receive presentation on priority-driven budgeting;
2. Approve demographics and schedule for Civic Assembly as recommended by the Civic Assembly Ad Hoc Subcommittee;
3. Provide other direction to the City Manager as deemed appropriate.