AS THE EMPORIA City Commission puts the finishing touches on the 2009 city budget, how do you think they did this year?
So far, the budget process has been rather quiet. There have been no real protests to any of the proposed budget reductions and the budget listening tour in the community only drew a handful of people at each location.
From these indicators, one might conclude that people are happy with the work of our city leaders.
This is Matt Zimmerman’s second year guiding the city budget process. Zimmerman said he was pleased with how the process worked this year.
“We had better information and were able to run different budget scenarios for the commissioners.”, he said.
With some of our community’s economic challenges and a less than perfect budget situation, it would have been easy for the budget process to fall apart.
But the results tell a different story: So far, the mill levy is flat, property taxes will be reduced, city services have been preserved and long-term capital improvement plans will start to get worked on.
What has impressed us is not only what was accomplished but how it was accomplished. The budget process moved along in a professional and civilized manner.
The budget is not perfect and improvements can be made in the future, but it is good to see teamwork among our city leaders to address tough issues and a process to work through them.
Comments
We allow registered users to post comments on this Web site. To learn more about our posting policies please read our User Poster Agreement Policy.
Posted by jayhawker (anonymous) on August 14, 2008 at 12:58 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Chris: What you forgot was a 14% increase in the sales tax.
Posted by photobuggy2 (anonymous) on August 14, 2008 at 9:46 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Property taxes go down and sales tax goes up! Hum???
Posted by create (anonymous) on August 14, 2008 at 1:15 p.m. (Suggest removal)
One thing I am very pleased with is the resurfacing project on 6th Avenue. They took the asphalt all the way into the connecting streets by quite a few feet instead of just stopping where the street meets 6th and causing a dip. It's much smoother now and quite an improvement. Hats off to whoever planned that.
Post a comment
We allow registered users to post comments on this Web site. Our goal with this feature is to encourage thoughtful discussions about the news stories. Using the comment feature to make random attacks on people is not acceptable. Emporiagazette.com neither endorses nor guarantees the accuracy of any user contribution. Responsibility for what is posted or contributed to this site is the sole responsibility of each user. To learn more about our posting policies please read our User Poster Agreement Policy.
(Requires free registration.)