Students Use Board Game To Learn How City Operates

From Leadership Sandy Springs: “The fate of the city is in your hands” is the charge to players of a new board game called Boom or Bust that was developed for Youth Leadership Sandy Springs (YLSS) students for their city government program day. Held on October 19, 2017, the class day featured the new game that was designed to teach students how the city manages money. Class members gained a sense of the complexity of developing a city budget and the challenge of being frugal with citizens’ money while remaining responsive to the community’s needs. YLSS is the high school program of Leadership Sandy Springs, a leadership development training organization.

The game was jointly created by YLSS director Polly Warren and two Youth Advisory Board members and YLSS alumnae Madeleine Sibert and Rachel Carlson. Madeleine is now at University of California, Berkeley and Rachel at University of Georgia. “For six years, I had watched PowerPoint presentations on city budgeting and thought there had to be a more interactive way to learn,” said Warren, and the board game idea was conceived. She then researched the city’s past five budgets so the students would deal with real numbers and real situations.

Students play in teams of four to five. A boxed game is delivered to each “city.” The front of the box says, “The fate of the city is in your hands. You raise the taxes. You make the cuts. Will you go boom or go bust?”

With the roll of the dice, players see how much money they receive in revenue (property taxes, franchise fees, municipal court fines, etc.) as well as what their expenditures must be to keep city services (police, fire, salaries, etc.) at the current level. They pick capital projects and figure out whether they have funds to add the projects. If they’re broke, they must determine how to raise the money to get out of debt.

Once the prototype was developed, YAB members Sibert and Carlson tested the game over the summer, adding some devious twists like having an Uber driver deliver wild cards. And the cards are truly wild, with such real life bombshells as “Hurricane Irma hits; subtract $2 million to cover extra police, fire and roads crew costs”, or “A homeless man sets fire to a mattress under a bridge; subtract $12 million for bridge repair.”

At city government day, special guest stars Mayor Rusty Paul and Councilman John Paulson were on hand to help teams figure ways out of debt and explain city budgeting.

Photos courtesy of Youth Leadership Sandy Springs