GAME PLAN

GAME PLAN TEMPLATE - I’m working with a large municipal government team to develop a more civil city budgeting process. The city’s budget is on a 2 year cycle. The current 2 yr budget started July 1, 2013. We’re looking to engage the whole system (citizens, students, politicians and government employees, etc) in the design and decision making process for the July 1, 2015 budget.

The budget planning and legal approval process is almost always a very stressful experience for ALL involved. The public dialogue is mean-spirited, fear based and highly political. For example, police and fire department lay-offs are always in the middle of budget cutting/balancing arguments. Every year citizens and the families of the newest hired police and fire fighters are terrorized at the prospects of loss of safety and loss of family livelihood. The local media reports on budget discord nightly, keeping the fear fresh… Every year, the city council/officials find the money, in the final hour, to save the police and fire jobs and rescue citizens from the increases in crime and fire safety issues purported by the fire and police unions and certain politicians. Then some say “they just kicked the can further down the road”

We plan to pull together a 50-60 person cross-section of the system to generate a GAME PLAN for the next 21 months of planning for the July 1, 2015 budget. We’re considering using world café, maybe 4 rounds, to develop the game plan. We have a great space with a 40 foot long wall and lots of colorful large sticky notes upon which to create our game plan.

I’m wondering who might suggest a series of café questions to generate the best possible connections and thinking about the game plan creation. And, some ideas as to when to go from the café tables to the wall. Maybe during round 4, folks could go to the wall with ideas, questions, etc on sticky notes… any thoughts?