I have had people ask why I did not support the budget. My answer is simple, we did not follow a logical strategic planning and budgeting process. As a result, we cannot be sure the budget accurately reflects the priorities of the citizens of the Town of Cave Creek. Budgets at any level of government should reflect the priorities of the people through their elected representatives.
In January 2023, the newly elected Cave Creek Town Council and Senior Staff conducted a contractor facilitated two day “Strategic Planning Offsite.” We identified specific topics that detailed our future direction. That was supposed to provide the spending priorities for the budget. In February, several members of the Council asked to have the Strategic Plan put on the agenda to be finalized. At that time, the plan had not been formally received from the contractor nor provided to the Council.
From my perspective, most Council Members had detailed notes with sufficient information to reconstruct the discussions from the offsite. Yet, in March the Town Staff put together a draft budget based on previous year’s spending. In effect creating a list of items important to Staff and previous Councils but not necessarily what was identified in the Strategic Plan at the offsite. And yes, we had four Council meetings where we discussed segments of the budget, but never had the opportunity to review how well it met the goals of the Strategic Plan.
There are three things that we can do to ensure that this doesn’t happen again. First, Section 30.35 (B) of our Town Code needs to be changed back to how it was prior to 2018 where two or more Council Members are allowed to add items to the agenda (currently only the mayor can place items on the Agenda). Secondly, we need to adopt effective processes that are already in use elsewhere in Maricopa County. And finally, we need to purchase end-to-end budgeting software that allows us to implement those processes quickly and efficiently.
Dusty Rhoades
Council Member
PS: If you need the citation for the Town Code as I referenced, it is located at this website: https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/cavecreek/latest/cavecreek_az/0-0-0-24163#JD_30.38
