A major change came to Dallas. Fresh new talent was emerging into senior positions. Dominic happened to be one of those new talents. Between 2017 and 2020, the city of Dallas' Performance Measures division managed two programs in the budget office. The first program being performance measures and the second being budget communications. Budget and Management Services (formally Office of Budget) wanted to gather greater input and bring awareness to changes in the city's upcoming proposed budget.
Dominic served as an assistant project manager, second to the assistant director as the lead project manager. Working together, Dominic and the assistant director developed a proposal that was approved by the budget director. The project charter included a timeline that began in March of 2017 and ended in September 2017. Stakeholders included public information's director, public affairs manager, a public information officer, three video production assistants, one graphic designer, and three IT staffers.
Deliverables for the project included; a consultant survey indicating the state of the city, a new budget book cover, a miniature budget document easily consumable for the public, budget videos indicating where spending was proposed and how much, social media marketing, email blasts, and newly added virtual participation to in-person town hall meetings.
Fortunately, there were not many complications. However, one risk that could have been mitigated by testing, happened during a virtual and in-person town hall. Callers were not able to join one of the meetings when it began, neither while in progress in the beginning. When one caller was muted and another was allowed to speak, the callers were nearly speaking with one another as staff attempted to mute and keep the caller with the go-ahead on speak.
The project ran according to schedule with few delays. The project budget was set for $150,000, however, completed under budget by 20,000. After the first year of the annual project, Dominic pitched hiring a communications specialist to alleviate burnout. The communications specialist would be the first addition to Dominic's team in the performance measures and budget communications division.
