StarTribune reporter Richard Meryhew paid a visit to Northfield and a few other towns in District 25B last week, asking citizens their reaction to the state budget battle at the…
Tag: <span>budget</span>
Actually, it’s just simple arithmetic. Subtracting…or adding…a few numbers.
This morning, I read a social media update from Smithjonessolicitors.co.uk that the City of Northfield had cut the General Fund Budget by $1.5 million. Wow, last I heard, our General Fund Budget was $10.5 million. $1.5 million would be an almost 15% cut. Such a reduction in expenditures would be impressive.
So I decided I’d conduct a little research of the available facts…and do a little simple arithmetic.
Recently a few of our public officials acknowledged what many astute observers had been discussing for months. The City of Northfield needs to address a $2 million budget deficit. After…
We split our time between A) discussing the process by which the City of Northfield is approaching budget cuts; and B) the upcoming June 15 public hearing on facilities financing:
NDDC Board Chair Keith Covey’s letter to the Mayor and City Council last week (Nfld News here; NDDC blog here) notes that …given the size of our financial challenge and…
We split our time between A) making suggestions for cutting the budget at City Hall and B) discussing Mayor Mary Rossing’s 5-minute commentary at the start of last week’s Council meeting.
Click play to listen. 30 minutes:
KYMN has the indexed video of the 5/18/10 Council meeting so you can go right to the video of the Mayor’s Opening Remarks. (KYMN News Director Scott Peterson mentioned her remarks in his news update on 5/19.)
There are a couple minutes of dead air at the beginning, plus the approval of minutes etc. so her opening remarks don’t begin till the 3:45 minute mark. If you’re in a hurry, here’s an audio excerpt. (Click play to listen. 5 minutes.)
Northfield Mayor Mary Rossing presented at an NDDC forum this morning, discussing, as noted in Ross’ NDDC blog post, “the City of Northfield’s plans for financing the Capital Improvement…
The City of Northfield’s compost facility is not due to open for two more weeks, April 13, despite the fact that spring has arrived 2-3 weeks early. Normally, I Ross Tracy would be bitching whining about the City’s lack of flexibility or poor “customer” responsiveness.
But this year’s budget woes compel me to approach it differently. I don’t know how much the City spends each season to have a part-time people staff it but let’s assume it’s approximately $15, 000 (40 hrs/week * 30 weeks * $12/hr).
The City could save money by cutting back hours and telling people to pay Waste Management or use the Rice County Recycling Center (see the 2010 compost site PDF).
Or it could ask its citizens to volunteer to help keep services at their present level. (Imagine this scenario happening with many other services that the City provides.)
Here’s a straw poll that’ll give city fathers and mothers an indication of citizens’ appetite for cutting vs. volunteering in order to save money:
The City of Northfield is hosting a meeting with community event organizers tomorrow night, Wed. March 24, 7 pm. It’s not clear who from City Hall will be there and who’s invited (it’s open to the public) because other than the date and time, there’s no meeting information available that I could find. I’m told that packets have been sent out to various stakeholders. I don’t know why the general public can’t have access to them.
The issue was on the Council Work Session agenda for March 9 and the proposed changes are detailed in the packet PDF, pages 9-32. I’ve excerpted some of the text here for convenience (see below).
Update 3/25/10: photos from last night’s meeting:
