Engaging the community at a time of unrest
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The challenge
The City of Wichita, Kansas are committed to community engagement as a central component of how the council operates. They've even won an award for their commitment to resident engagement.
The coronavirus pandemic led to a significant loss of income - the City of Wichita faced a $4.7 million budget deficit. This time round they needed to focus on how to make savings to the council's overall finances. The pandemic also severely diminished their ability to run face-to-face engagement so having good digital engagement tools was essential.
The approach
Wichita had used Bill Simulator in 2019 to get resident input on property tax bills, receiving over 1,400 responses with broad support for increased spending on fire and police. In 2020, they decided to use Budget Simulator instead to focus on making savings.
With their experience from having used Simulator the previous year, the team were able to streamline the exercise the second time round, using fewer slider topics so that it was easier for residents to complete. This, combined with the pandemic forcing many users online, meant that the City of Wichita's budget team were expecting a high response.
The Budget Simulator happened to be published shortly after George Floyd was killed by police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis.
The results
Response rates to the Simulator more than doubled compared to the previous year, and came from a broader demographic spread than anticipated. They saw a dramatic influx in participants from a younger age group, who felt mobilised to participate in the wake of George Floyd's death and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests. Many of these respondents used the tool to vote for defunding the police. Altogether, Wichita's 2020-2021 Budget Simulator received 3,165 responses.
Respondents placed a far higher priority in keeping things like libraries and fire/medical response as funded as possible, whereas police emergency response fell towards the bottom of the list, with respondents voting for an average 5% decrease in police funding. The results were presented at public meetings and to the chief of police.
In a year of massive uncertainty and unrest, Wichita's Budget Simulator provided a snapshot into the wider state of the nation.
Delib is a govtech leader specialising in consultation and engagement, trusted by over 600 government organisations worldwide, including major planning projects. Since 2004, we've been building secure, accessible digital platforms to make participation simpler, fairer, and more inclusive. Our flagship product, Citizen Space, was built in collaboration with the UK government and has supported more than 11 million responses across over 110,000 democratic activities.