“An accounting career and background will help me get to the truth behind the smoke and mirrors of governmental fund accounting. I will communicate those realities as simply as possible to as wide an audience of citizens as is possible. As a member of this city’s council, I will not take the place of the city’s finance director nor the city’s outside financial auditors, but will hold them accountable for simple, understandable, and current information regarding money flowing into and out of the city’s stewardship. Relatively inexpensive technology can make both summary information and detailed transactions available to taxpayers, ratepayers, fee payers, the press, and the individual.”
This next council's mandate - and my part on it - during this economic lull is to increase general public knowledge of the truth regarding the city’s finances and its financial position. To do so, we must:
- UPGRADE and tie financial and information systems together.
- OPEN UP ready public access to accounts, revenue sources, and objects of expenditure by applying technologies already at hand or to be developed.
- SOLIDIFY revenue sources.
- LESSEN reliance on cyclical or unstable revenues.
- SLOW DOWN the pace of expenditures in line with the decreases of revenues.
- RATCHET DOWN pension committments to unions and bargaining units.
- SHED services not essential for government units (ex., Landscape Maintenance Districts).
- CUT OUT "welfare" transfers of tax money.
- WEAN city from manipulative federal and state programs "bribing" away local control.
