The adoption of a budget is one of the most important activities undertaken by local government officials each year. The budget serves as the elected board's primary opportunity to establish community priorities and as a tool for planning community services and programs, communicating priorities, and properly managing finances. The budget process, however, with its big numbers, multiple acronyms, and counterintuitive rules, can be confusing.A book in the Local Government Board Builders series, this guide is intended to remove the mystery of the budget process and to equip North Carolina's city and county governing bodies with the tools they need to actively participate in the process.See the Local Government Board Builders Series webpage for other books in the series and related School of Government publications (https://www.sog.unc.edu/resource-series/local-government-board-builders-series-0).