The West Plains City Council on Tuesday approved an agreement to contract with Resource Exploration to implement priority-based budgeting tools and approved a resolution authorizing the city to execute a management agreement for the North Terra Golf Course.
West Plains Finance Director Earlene Rich introduced the resolution to the City Council for its final reading, stating that the agreement was presented to the city council last month to contract with Resource Exploration to implement priority-based budgeting.
Rich said, “As you all know, this year’s budget was presented to you on a line-item basis, which makes it very difficult to make decisions and to know exactly how the decisions you are making impact programs in the city as far as what services we offer to citizens as well as what level we offer those services at.”
A priority-based budgeting tool is something that helps you transition a line-item budget, which is basically just the costs for each individual type of expense, according to Rich.
"It transitions that into a program-based budget, where you can see what services we are offering to citizens, how well they are valued in the community, what proportion of the community they serve if they are somebody else who does the same type of thing. It provides a lot of other types of data to assist in making budget decisions to help you guys make the best decision of where we should spend and allocate our resources most wisely for the community,” Rich said.
According to Rich, Resource Exploration is a company that has been in the field for at least a decade or two and has helped at least 250 other communities transition a priority-based budgeting software into that type of discussion for their budgets.
Rich said, “We are hoping to have the process done. I think they can have it done in like three months. It makes me a little bit nervous to say that out loud because it means it might be ready by next year’s budget. That’s really important. We have about $2 million we need to start talking about for next year’s budget, which you all saw in the proposed budget this year.”
“We have about $2 million worth of decisions we need to make for our community. We need to make sure we make those decisions the best way possible. Having more data available, we think, will help in that regard,” Rich added.
In a unanimous vote, the City Council passed the resolution authorizing and directing the City Administrator to execute the agreement with Resource Exploration for priority-based budgeting tools and the software's implementation.
Rich said the city will start carrying out community outreach to educate the public on the new software.
The City Council then passed a resolution authorizing the City Administrator to execute a management agreement between the city of West Plains and GreatLIFE MidMO LLC to manage the North Terra Golf Course.
City of West Plains Community Services Director Todd Shanks said the company will oversee the day-to-day management of the North Terra Golf Course.
The services include staffing, development of an annual budget, tracking daily usage and inventory of assets, ongoing course maintenance and establishing practices, marketing and promotion of golf facilities.
“They really specialize in the management of small municipal golf courses, especially in the midwest,” Shanks said.
