The Emporia Gazette

February 13, 2012

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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.