Surviving Our Governments

While the City of Highland Park is fiscally sound and has a AAA bond rating we need to make some big decisions as to how we spend and gather money over the next several years. Since being elected in 1993 I have always taken a strong conservative position on government spending and taxation. While I have not prevailed over the past several years on particular points of our fiscal policy, this entire city council has not raised our property taxes over the CPI index for over 15 years. .

Currently we have seen a big reduction in revenues such as building permits, the real estate transfer tax, and sales tax. Unfortunately these revenue sources help support our operating costs like personnel and other basic functions. Fortunately, we do have significant reserves that should allow us to absorb a few economic bumps in our revenue assumptions. That supportive cushion however does not alleviate our responsibility to come up with a long term solution if things in fact do not turn around in the short term.

Our staff has told us that we have cut most of the cuttable spending on our core missions. Staff is pushing to increase revenues through additional taxes if we want to keep current service levels. We need to work harder on reducing costs through consolidation and efficiencies. We might also have to reduce services that don't jeopardise safety and basic services to our citizens until the economy heals.

I am not going to vote to increase property taxes or additional fees while our citizens are under the economic stress we are currently enduring. We need to support our citizens, especially the fixed income folks, that are struggling to live in our community. These are scary times and our city government might have to tighten up far past a point we are comfortable with doing.

Specifically, we need to develop several 3 year scenarios where revenue projections are better, flat, and worse than current conditions. While the "better" revenue projection would be a comparative walk in the park, the most likely and probable flat or worse projection will need creative solutions that we have not seen in our life time of public service.

We need to get moving on these plans and come up with solutions. We must continue to provide our citizens with the essential services while not increasing their costs of living in our community. Other pressures from increased food and fuel costs will continue to shrink our discretionary spending. At our local government level we must understand that we have to focus on essential services and reduce costs rather than raise taxes and fees until times get better.