THE PROPOSED city budget is not perfect — spending has been cut and some programs and departments will feel the pinch. All taxpayers will feel the pain of the 1.5-mill increase in property taxes.
But compared to the first draft offered by City Manager Matt Zimmerman, the version of the budget the city commission will consider on Wednesday looks very good indeed.
Zimmerman’s first draft was not pretty. He proposed to balance the budget and keep taxes down by, among other things, ending city participation in the taxi coupon program and dropping support for the Emporia Municipal Band. Both proved to be hot-button issues guaranteed to get the attention of the public and the commissioners. The budget draft also made clear how serious the city’s budget problems are.
As a result, more work, study and discussion went into the budget the commission will consider on Wednesday than into any city budget in the past three or four decades. The commission sponsored multiple public forums so people could discuss the drafts as they were prepared. Each forum helped shape the next draft.
Along the way, changes were made. Most notable were the decisions to continue paying for the taxi program and the band, but at half the previous level. That will mean that users of taxi coupons will have to pay more for rides and the band will have to look for some private donations to keep it operating. But it also means that there will continue to be a discount taxi program in town for people who need it and there will still be a city band to play at Fremont Park on Thursday evenings in the summer.
The budget itself cannot be called progressive, but the process that produced it is, in many ways, an improvement over previous years.
The 2008 budget is a holding action, but it could easily have been a retreat.
under_score (anonymous) says...
Emporia has to be the only city in the U.S. that is so poorly mismanaged that the astronomical increase in home valuations over the past 5-10 years has not created enough extra revenue to keep them out of the red. That is free money. I'd like for there to be a clear explanation of where that extra money has gone.
August 21, 2007 at 10:09 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )