May 6th Council Meeting

Tonight was a momentous evening for the City of Isanti.

I informed the Council that I am declaring the week of June 8th Isanti Employer Week. I will be rolling this out more as we get closer. I believe it is important to pay tribute to our employers as well as educate our community that we have over 1400 people employed in the City of Isanti. Some may look around and see a quite town; I look around and see a bustling energetic City bursting with exciting opportunities.

I was happy to announce that the Economic Development Association of Minnesota has awarded its coveted Business Recruitment prize to the City of Isanti. This year’s competition was fierce as 2-3 times the normal amount of submissions were received. We used the Ever Cat Fuels project as our example of Isanti’s new business recruitment process. We have worked very hard in the last 16 months to make Isanti stand out among other communities. This award is an independent acknowledgement that we are on the right track.

I was honored tonight to show Isanti Police Officer Rod Barrows our appreciation for his bravery and skill in the line of duty. On November 17th 2007 Officer Barrows confronted a felony suspect who was holding a handgun and had just threatened a citizen’s life. Officer Barrows was able to arrest the individual without further incident. We often hear about the negative outcomes of such incidents but rarely hear anything when our police officers excel. The Minnesota Chief’s Association awarded Officer Barrows the Medal of Honor for his outstanding work.

The Council finalized the plans to handle nuisance and foreclosed properties in the City. We had an in depth discussion. I wanted the City to outsource the mowing of yards because it cost us less. The example of cost given by staff was the outsourcing would cost the City $30 per lawn and if done by part time City workers it would be $55 or as much as $78 if done by full time employees. This seemed to be a clear financial decision. Some made the argument that if we outsourced it then we would have to pay immediately. I once again pointed out that we pay our City staff to do the work therefore there is no difference in time paying the bill if we handle in house or outsource the work. The City will get reimbursed either way when the property taxes are paid as the unpaid cost will be assessed to the tax rolls. There was a “guarantee” that public works will be much quicker this year than they were last year in taking care of these properties. I hope that will be the case. I was out voted 4-1 on this matter so there will be no outsourcing of this service. It is unfortunate since the cost will be much higher. We must maintain the property values of the entire City and not allow the cancer of nuisance properties to devastate neighborhoods. Once an area or city starts the downward slide it is extremely difficult and costly to rehabilitate.

The Council passed the rental ordinance on a 5-0 vote. We have worked on this ordinance for the last year. We have taken a great deal of time to fully consider this ordinance. I believe it will help ensure a strong community for generations to come. I want to thank all those that have worked on this project.

We passed the Revolving Loan Fund. This is yet another financial tool that will help us attract more new businesses and help existing businesses to expand. Our future success lies in diversifying the tax base with more commercial properties.

I wanted to end this posting with an item I actually updated the Council on at the beginning of the meeting. We are projecting a revenue deficit of $280,000. This represents about 8% of our total budget. I serve on the Finance Committee and it will be our job in the next week to start putting together a list of actions to balance our budget. These actions will be presented to the Council at our May 20th meeting. The majority of this deficit is due to unpaid property taxes. 4 of our top ten tax payers have not paid their taxes. 3 of these are land developers. The total owed by these top 4 is about $260,000. If they all had paid their 2007 taxes we would not have this issue.

The chickens have come home to roost after the housing bubble burst. Many communities are going through the exact same issues we are. Rapid Residential Development is never a good thing. We must work our way through this and make sure we never face these issues again. We will be looking at several different areas to help balance our budget. These include current City staffing levels, major City projects and fund balances. It is important we act now because the fiscal issue will only be tougher as we face 2009.

No matter how dark this may appear our future is bright. The businesses we have been attracting and continue to attract will be hitting the tax rolls in the years to come. As we rely less on residential taxes to fund City operations the better it is for everyone. We need to work our Long Term Financial Plan that we started in 2007 and keep building our commercial tax base.