Bloomington budget notebook: Outcome-based budgeting, city council salaries
Next Wednesday (May 29), Bloomington’s city council will hold a work session to discuss budget priorities for 2025.
Possibly part of the conversation will be the concept of outcomes-based budgeting, which is a notion that was given some discussion at an April 24 budget work session.
Outcomes-based budgeting focuses on getting specific results and impacts, in contrast to more typical budgeting for governmental units, which allocates funds based on historical spending patterns and departmental needs.
Outcomes-based budgeting is also the topic of a resolution that will likely appear again on the city council’s agenda for June 5, after councilmembers ran out of time to consider it on May 15.
The resolution was drafted by councilmember Isak Asare, who pitched the idea to his council colleagues in late April like this: “By justifying budget allocations based on specific expected outcomes, we also open up a new channel of communication with our constituents, allowing them to see exactly how and why their tax dollars are being allocated.”
Asare said, “The primary advantage to me of this type of an approach is the alignment of our resources, limited as they may be, to our most critical community priorities.”
Asare added, “[Outcomes-based budgeting] allows us to clearly define what success looks like for each funded initiative, and measure progress against these goals. This process ensures that every dollar spent is an investment towards tangible beneficial outcomes for our citizens.”
Attending the April work session was Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson, who is now nearing the end of her fifth month of service in that role, after being sworn in on Jan. 1.
The idea of outcomes-based budgeting looks like it has some traction with Thomson, but she is not looking to try to fully integrate it into this year’s city budget process. This year’s process will wrap up in October with a vote on the 2025 budget. Asare’s resolution looks to the 2026 budget cycle for implementation of the outcomes-based approach.
At her traveling town hall held at Tri-North Middle School on May 16, Thomson said, “We’ve all acknowledged that we won’t get fully to an outcomes- based budget for 2025.” But she added that she’s looking to integrate the reporting processes to achieve an outcomes-based approach by the 2026 budget cycle.
Part of every budget process is the determination of salaries for elected officials. Last year, the idea of implementing a significant increase to city councilmember salaries got a brief mention, but never went beyond that. Councilmembers received the same 5-percent increase as other non-union employees.
In connection with setting salaries for elected officials, sometimes cited as a desirable outcome is a healthy number of contested elections.
Based on a B Square review of just the 2023 municipal elections, for the 19 biggest cities in the state of Indiana (after Indianapolis), there appears to be little connection between the salary set for city councilmembers and the number of contested elections. That comparison is summarized in the embedded Google Sheet below.
In 2023, Bloomington’s city councilmembers were paid just about in the middle of that 19-city group, both in terms of raw salary (rank = 9) and per capita compensation (rank =10).
