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Greg Canally

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Wednesday, 07 November 2007

Greg Canally, Austin Budget Officer

Although he spends his days working with numbers, city budget officer Greg Canally doesn’t forget the people, services, roads and buildings behind those numbers. “My wife gets annoyed because we’ll be walking around and I’ll see a busted water valve, and I’ll call someone I know in the parks department to get it fixed.” One aspect he sees in Austin government is the concern everyone takes in the city, “Whether you are a direct provider or just part of that process you feel ownership and take pride in it.”

Education: Bachelor’s in economics from Villanova University in Philadelphia, Master’s in economics from the University of Texas, Austin
Family: Wife and a four-month-old son
Contact: greg.canally@ci.austin.tx.us

Q. What is an average day at work for you?: A. There is no average day. What we do is coordinate the overall budget process for the entire city. We work with each city department, there’s about thirty of them, on two things. First is developing the budget and then, after that budget has passed, we work with them on monitoring it and making sure what we put in there is carried out, and report back to city council on how we’re doing with what we put in the budget. We also work with other department directors and the city manager on budget issues and special projects that come up. Most issues and projects take money, and when money is involved, we make sure that the financial perspective is addressed.
Q. What does Austin’s growth mean for its revenue and spending?: A. We have been growing for the past several years. A lot of that has to do with what a different place Austin is. With the introduction of different businesses we’ve really gone beyond the university. We have the semi-conductor industry, we have our movie industry, etc. What growth provides is additional revenue to beef up existing services or go do new things. But we have the same issues any private corporation faces: fixed operating costs, such as salary and equipment. How revenue is matching with expenditure is a pretty tight analysis; there’s not a lot of extra money floating around. We’re bound by appraisal caps and how much we can raise property tax, so most fluctuation you see in revenue come from sales tax. When the economy is doing well, people are out shopping and we’re collecting sales tax.
Q. What surprised you most upon taking this job?: A. The thing that continues to surprise me is how many different services the city provides. A week doesn’t go by without learning something new the city does. It’s a vast organization and it’s the place where the government and the people come together. Part of our job when we’re doing funding allocations is looking at how different services are provided, and if they’re efficient. We get to talk to a lot of neat people out in the city who have direct relationships with the community.
Q. What is something you’re particularly proud of in this year’s budget?: A. We’re investing back into parks. The city just won the 2006 bond election and the budget department was responsible for coordinating that effort. We got to work with citizens and the bond advisory committee in the bond process. It was nice to get out of the office and meet people at town hall meetings. In that bond election we made a lot of investment into our parks’ core basic infrastructure.