Isanti's Fiscal Future Part 3

I recently gave a speech and presentation to the Isanti Area Chamber of Commerce. This is the base for my third instalment of Isanti's Fiscal Future. I talked about our busy year and our achievements. I want to share this with you and will go through each area in depth. In order to do this without putting you to sleep I will present the outline and discuss each section in order, roughly one a day until complete. The first major section will be our Signature Projects. Within this section there are 6 major components.

Isanti 2007

• Signature Projects
• Budget and Taxes
• Tax Capacity
• Reform
• Communication
• My 2008 Business Goals

The Signature Projects for Isanti

• Long Term Financial Plan
• Budget that included spending reductions and tax cut
• New City Website
• Pedestrian Bridge
• Isanti City Partnership
• Ever Cat Fuels

Long Term Financial Plan (LTFP) has been a goal of mine for the last 2 ½ years. It took last falls election to bring the Council around to the same goal. The LTFP will map out our city’s expected financial obligation, future expenditures and revenues. The LTFP will end the days of not knowing the consequences each time the Council is asked to spend money.
I have written and spoken about this for years and it will be one of our crowning achievements as a City, although most will not be aware of its existence. That is actually kind of good. For when it works well, it will be an invisible hand helping to guide all of our fiscal decisions. I will be asking that we do however communicate the end result to our tax payers. This would be accomplished by sending an illustrated summary of Isanti’s future fiscal decisions to our taxpayers as part of the Isantian News Letter.

Not to get to political, but once established it can only be undone by a Council that will ignore it or undo it. Elections matter, make sure you keep electing candidates that believe in fiscal responsibility and the tools that make it possible.