Mayor Henry and tonights NWAP meeting
Posted by Mike Sylvester - 5/15/08 @ 8:37 pm - Filed Under Featured
The Northwest Area Partnership is a collection of neighborhood associations located in the northwestern portion for Fort Wayne. I attend a fair number of their meetings since I am the President of the Valley Place Neighborhood Association. Due to tax season, tonight was the first meeting I attended this year.
Mayor Henry and his staff came to the meeting and gave an interesting presentation about the future of Fort Wayne’s budget due to the recent property tax changes passed this year.
Here are some highlights:
The population of Fort Wayne grew by 33% from 1999 - 2007 (Almost entirely due to annexation).
Fort Wayne had 41% more roads in 2007 than in 1999.
Fort Wayne occupied 39% more square miles in 2007 than 1999.
Adjusted for inflation property tax spending was $653 per capita in 1988, $621 per capita in 2000, and $589 per capita in 2008.
81% of the Fort Wayne budget goes for personnel.
The City is expecting a decrease in property tax revenue of 5.8 million in 2009 and then 13.2 million in 2010.
The Mayor stated that he feels 6 million can be cut from the budget for 2009; however, he is not sure about 2010.
There was an exercise that was ran to determine what our spending priorities were. Each person was given 10 green dots and asked to put them on a board next to the City services we wanted to keep at current strength. The categories were: Animal Control, Fire Education, Flood Protection, Fire Protection, Gain and retain jobs, Golf Courses, Green Initiatives, Leaf Pickup, Neighborhood Code enforcement, Neighborhood Stabilization, Parks Facilities, Parks Programs, Paving Streets and Roads, Police Protection, Side walks - Curbs - Alleys, Swimming Pools, Trails development and upkeep.
I used my green dots on Flood Protection x 1, Fire Protection x 3, Police Protection x 5, and Sidewalks - Curbs - Alleys x 1.
The Mayor mentioned one possible method of increasing revenues; by increasing parking fines downtown.
The Mayor also asked for feedback. Rachel Blakeman (Public Information Officer) stayed and took notes and wrote down all of the ideas given; she promised that the Mayor would get them tomorrow morning.
There were several ideas that were brought up to save money that I thought were quite good:
Someone mentioned that we could have leaf-pickup twice a year rather then three times.
Another person mentioned that the City could stop picking up leaves entirely and let property owners take care of their own property (I am in favor of this!)
I mentioned that we could stop hiring out of town consultants for so many things.
I also mentioned that we could spend more money locally and keep that money in our own local economy.
All in all it was a good meeting and a good presentation by the Mayor and his staff. I am impressed that the Mayor is making a genuine effort to get input from the community and he seems determined to cut spending. Both are necessary things that he seems determined to accomplish.
Mike Sylvester
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2 Responses to “Mayor Henry and tonights NWAP meeting”
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Great work, I’m so glad you were at the meeting to report information! Here’s my thoughts:
I’d say you are right on that the city of Fort Wayne grew by 33% from 1999 - 2007 (Almost entirely due to annexation). Mostly taxation
with little services to Aboite, but I see
the City has it’s sites for expanding Northwest.
Limit the building of new retail, commercial spaces. There are to many places vacant or for lease through-out the city and outlining areas.
We are over built and over budget.
The City bloted personnel budget can be decreased by 20% to 30%:
If the city wants to include tourism then parking
areas should be available free to promote downtown tourism for out of town people and future good-will.
The Mayor mentioned one possible method of increasing revenues; by increasing parking fines downtown.
Has our local gov. looked into how other people venture to downtowns. Many cities outside of Indiana provide parking for out of town guests.
Florida, Tenn., Mi, Ect…
This 81% of the Fort Wayne budget goes for personnel.
We can do better than spending 81% of the entire Budget on personnel.
There’s much more to do to keep this City vibrant
alive and inviting. Let’s take care of what we can afford first.
Instead of hiring out of town consultants, they could simply listen to the residents who attend their meetings.
Unfortunately, what the City wants usually seems to be very different than what the people want. So the City pays these “consultants” to make bogus reports which they then use as the foundation for their idiotic schemes.