A Silver Lining in the 2017 City Budget

I’ll fallen behind on my blog due to the tremendous amount of work that went into the 2017 budget.  I think both Administration Director Valerie Martin and I would say that we went through all the stages of the grieving process during the budget process…disbelief, denial, anger, self-pity ... and finally…. acceptance.

I understand that the 2017 budget has something for everybody to dislike. While most people will begrudgingly support a modest increase in taxes, a 5% levy increase combined with an ambulance fee and wheel tax doesn’t seem modest. In addition, the 2017 budget included reductions to popular services like the senior center and museum and the elimination of funding for the Rountree Art Gallery.

Unfortunately, there were no easy answers. Our shortfall was significant. We couldn’t continue with business as usual.  It would have been politically easy to “kick the can” down the road, but that action would have led to even greater fiscal challenges in future.

Yep, no question about it, the budget was an unpleasant challenge.

To begin to move forward during the budget season, I had to let go of the negative and begin to reframe my mindset to think about the hidden opportunities.

For me, there is a silver lining in the 2017 budget – opportunities that will make us better and stronger as both an organization and a community. Here are a few:

• We have the opportunity to do a long range financial plan for the City.  You can expect that this plan will contain financial indicators and goals so that we can easily monitor and communicate our fiscal health over time, knowing that our elected Council members typically change every year. 
• We have the opportunity to build a better budget. A budget that any resident, financially savvy or not, could pick up and easily use to gain an understanding how their tax dollars are being spent.
• We have the opportunity to look at our services in a new way and to challenge long term assumptions or habits that exist because “we’ve always done it that way”
• We have the opportunity to look for new partners for both funding and service delivery. 
• We have the opportunity to continue to emphasize the importance of reaching out to our peer cities, professional associations, and other partners to make sure that we are modeling best practices and that our knowledge isn’t limited by our building walls or geographic boundaries. 

As the City’s management team, we were relieved to see the City moving towards a more sustainable financial future. We care about this community and we want Platteville to be the premier example of a thriving rural regional center.