A balanced budget is one result of good social planning, not *the* precursor to it. This much I'm sure the mayor understands.
Yet Calgarians have been asked to engage in an unconscionable activity: namely to use a financial spreadsheet which purpose is to record tactical activities and outcomes *several steps removed from previous planning and strategy*, for the purpose of planning future strategy.
Not only do spreadsheets lock in available options to fit certain ranges of pre-determined proxies for outcomes, but the budget balancing spreadsheet in present use does not even provide useful indicators of how effective current and past have been. Therefore, Calgarians must not only guess at how well previous dollars have been used, but also guess how city officials might reverse-engineer social policy from arbitrary financial figures. (There is no way for one to rationally allocate more or less funding to something if one does not know how such funding advances one's personal or community goals.)
Also completely excluded from the realm of possibility is the option to consider, add, or substitute new kinds of collaborative expenditure among departments and external partners that is less costly or delivers better results than the imposed current rigid model of how the City fails to work today. This is evident in the various community consultations in which different kinds of stakeholders were systematically discouraged to talk to each other; the city having chosen to consult with each of many stakeholders group individually without effective advertisement or publicity.
In short, unless we as citizens are enabled to collaborate with each using *planning* tools for planning based on a substantial understanding of past performance and future goals, this current budgeting activity can aspire to be nothing more than a farce.
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