Pricing Public Programs

Use this worksheet to price programs you want your policymakers to invest in to create genuine and lasting community safety.

Pricing Public Programs Calculator

Use this tool to create a budget proposal and calculate the costs of community programs you wish to propose. It will total the costs and calculate the reduction in your city’s PD budget that would be needed to pay for the proposed program.

There are 3 ways to calculate the cost — just click on the one you want to use:

Analogy method
1. Analogy
Use this method if you want to expand an existing program, such as to serve 25% more families through an existing recreation program.
Parametric method
2. Parametric
Use this method if you know the unit cost to provide a service, such as providing emergency shelter to families at a cost of $25 per family per night.
Bottom-up method
3. Bottom-up
Use this method if you want to price out each component of the program, such as a job placement program that would need a staff of 25 and a budget of $1M per year.

About the Tool

The Pricing Public Programs worksheet empowers members of the public to use a Google Sheet to “cost out” – or find the price of – public programs.

Using the spreadsheet the user can select among three different costing methodologies depending on the information and time available to conduct the costing analysis. The costing approach in the worksheet is designed to be flexible to a wide variety of social service programs, and users are encouraged to consult the User Guide for details on how to choose the right methodology for their purposes.

The cost estimates created in this tool can then be incorporated into the The People’s Budget Calculator to craft a proposal for submission to local officials.