Making a budget that everyone agrees on is challenging and frustrating
Without the proper surveys, simulations, and data to help, you will:
Fund the wrong projects
Lose trust from residents who disagree on spending decisions
Frustrate tax payers who don’t see the value
Make poor decisions due to unproductive infighting
Fail to align departments with spending goals
Have difficulty working around budget constraints
Put residents in their decision-makers' shoes. Show community members what it takes to balance a budget.
Avoid bad budgeting decisions
Don’t let the vocal minority pressure you into poor choices. Use data to reveal funding priorities.
Gain support from your residents and internal stakeholders
Use Polco’s data and simulations to prove your budgeting plan.
Lead a successful budget process
Enact supported decisions to advance your community’s goals.
Let’s work together! Here’s how Polco works:
Engage stakeholders
Gather input and encourage stakeholder participation in making budgeting trade-offs.
Identify what’s important
Analyze unbiased data. Pinpoint the most important budget goals.
Take action with confidence
Implement findings into plans and budgets.
While we understand that in order to say yes to the right things you may need to say no to most things. Your residents might not. We’re here to help.
8,640,000 hours of residents' time wrestling with budgeting trade-offs
Over 150,000+ balanced budgets submitted by residents
500+ communities use Polco to make supported budgeting decisions
The comprehensive parks and rec platform that gives you everything you need.
Comprehensive public data about your city collected and analyzed by experts. See important community data all in one place. Measure data points over time.
- Actionable data for strategic and comprehensive plans
- Data to align city council and city managers on important issues
- A go-to source for grant application data and evidence
Gather community member input on any topic at any time with customizable or templated surveys, polls, live events, and simulations.
- The simplest and fastest way to interact with verified community members
- Build support by showing residents the real constraints government leaders face
- Collect high quality data for strategic planning and budgeting
Get data about your community, from your community. National benchmark comparison surveys that help you identify priorities and see where you stand next to the national average.
- The most representative community data available
- Align your goals with what matters most to residents
- Use data for prioritizing, planning, and budgeting
Engagement tools that build resident support for your local government budget
As a Strategic Government Finance Leader, it’s your responsibility to guide a budgeting process that acts in the best interest of your community. But while you understand the complexities of a city budget, including the tough tradeoffs that have to be made, your residents may not. This misunderstanding is not only frustrating, but also results in public contention when resident priorities are not met.
Balancing Act Budget by Polco’s Simulations bridge the gap between local governments and their communities by providing an easy way to educate, inform, and collect input on the budget.
Our simulations allow residents to step into your shoes and experience the difficulties and cost constraints of balancing a city budget firsthand, which creates empathy in a way traditional town halls cannot. Plus, the user-friendly and visual interfaces are simple to use and understand.
We want residents to know the importance of the programs and services their local government provides.That’s why our tools are designed to help you garner resident support and understanding to help make your job just that much easier.
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