Met with our good partners, the University of Nebraska Public Policy Center, this morning. They are conducting the survey of 600 citizens regarding City budget priorities. This survey will be used as the basis for the Community Conversations and the Deliberative Process in April. We have worked closed with the PPC in the past on Community Conversations and will help provide facilitators for their Deliberative Process to be held on April 12. In turn, they will compare the results of our Community Conversations with the results of the Deliberative Process. While our formats are quite similar, they will use a research model. They will pay approximately 60 -70 people selected at random to attend a day long session on the budget. We will bring in interested citizens from across the community in a less research-focused manner to have basically the same conversation. We are interested in learning if the results will be similar or very different. We will be meeting with representatives from the Mayor's office on Friday to go over specifics of our Community Conversations and to pin down dates and locations.

The Mayor's Office is gearing up for our Community Conversations regarding the upcoming budget. It appears we will be hosting four to five events. The intent is to bring together citizens from across the community with very diverse interests, opinions and experiences to try to build consensus on how to move forward with the City's budget. These will be held in four or five locations across the community, giving citizens easy access and the ability to become engaged. The budget for the upcoming fiscal year will be very, very tight and the Mayor, for the first time any one can remember, is asking citizens to step up to help him prioritize and move forward. What is it the citizens of this community hold dear and how do they want their dollars spent. This has the potential to be a huge community builder with citizens feeling as if they actually have a role in their government. We have much work that will need to be done over the next 30 - 60 days! But it is exciting!

Much behind the scenes work has been taking place regarding the 2015 Vision. In October, we hosted another public engagement activity to specifically have citizens begin a more indepth dialogue on the West Haymarket expansion pillar.
It was a cold and rainy day but over three hundred people showed up and participated in the event. Results of that event were that a large percentage of the citizens were in favor of moving forward with the project. Concerns still needing to be addressed included: how was this going to be paid for and how were we, as a community going to deal with the infrastructure issues. Based on that public input, the City Council voted 7-0 to move forward with a redevelopment plan. The Mayor is now interested in moving forward with bringing the citizens of the community together to discuss priorities for his next budget. The primary question is "What are people willing to pay for?" That is a key question for this community, especially during this time when the budget is more than just tight. We are looking forward to working on this project with the Mayor's Office.