The City of Raleigh Budget and Management Services department has published the 2026 City of Raleigh Program Catalog. This catalog is designed to give residents a clearer picture of how the City of Raleigh serves the community and the public funds and staff that support those services.
Traditionally, the City’s Adopted Budget presents City financial information by fund and department in broad categories like “personnel” or “operating expenses”. While this is useful for internal purposes, it does not always reflect how residents and visitors experience local government.
Every day, Raleigh residents and visitors interact with City services like parks, emergency response, or community events. The Program Catalog organizes these services into individual “programs” and complements the Adopted Budget by breaking down the budgeted expenses and staff for these programs. For the purposes of translating these services into programs, programs were defined as “a group of closely related and interdependent activities that lead to an identifiable result”.
This catalog is just the beginning of an ongoing effort to make local government more transparent, accountable, and responsive to the people it serves.
The budget and employee numbers identified in the Catalog include shared overhead expenses with other programs. Therefore, the program costs and position numbers do not represent the “go away” budget savings if a specific service was reduced, or eliminated. City staff would need to complete additional analysis to determine specific budget savings if a program was reduced or eliminated.