Practice area 02
Turning a plan into a public budget that funds it — with a process, a calendar, and documents that hold up under council review.
What this covers
A budget is a political document as much as a financial one. Meridian's budgeting work focuses on building a process — a calendar, a decision framework, a presentation format — that lets council trace every significant request back to an adopted priority, and lets staff build a recommended budget they can defend line by line.
That includes the mechanics governments often underinvest in: sequencing internal requests, presenting gross-and-net figures transparently, and building in-year adjustment practices that don't quietly erode the plan.
What it produces
A budget built without reference to the strategic plan is just an extrapolation of last year's numbers. The crosswalk work here is the direct continuation of Strategic & business planning — it's where the plan either gets funded or doesn't.
From the toolkit
Short walkthroughs of the templates and models Meridian builds with clients — illustrated with a fictional Alberta city, City of Larkspur.