Fall Isantian Article

With our hometown Minnesota Owls getting ready to drop the first puck of the season we must know that our City Budget is being finalized. I want to first say farewell to Council Member Jeff Kolb. He had to resign due to a change in employment. Mr. Kolb served nearly 4 years and brought a wealth of knowledge to each and every issue we faced. I want to thank Jeff and his family for their service to our City.

Now back to our budget and the plan we are following. First the good news, our plan does not raise taxes for 2011 nor does it cut any services. This was accomplished due to the plan we put in place several years ago to cut cost and operate as efficiently as possible. We have discussed the financial plan many times as a City and we will continue to discuss and tweak this as we go along. The great recession we are in continues to make local government operations extremely difficult. The State’s 6 Billion deficit and our region’s double digit unemployment rate continue to make long term budgeting difficult. The dollars the State has been unwilling or unable to pay us are not coming back and the delinquent taxes and assessments are still hanging on us like an Albatross. We have planned for this and continue to weather this economic storm.

We do need to however talk as a community and determine just what type of City we want to be in the future. What level of services do we wish to provide and at what cost. We plan to start community meetings at the beginning of 2011 to make sure we have heard every idea on how we can efficiently operate and provide the services we all need.

We have been having great success in Marketing Isanti and developing the next round of new businesses and expanding our current companies. The Special TIF we created this year has sparked a number of exciting projects that will help us continue to grow our tax base and help provide the funding for the services we need. We are working through roughly a dozen potential exciting new businesses and expansions of current companies.

As our summer winds down and the many great outdoor activities like BMX, Soccer and Redbirds Baseball come to the end of another great season our winter sports start to kickoff. The Farmers Market continues to grow in size and excitement. This tremendous asset to our community continues to bring people to our revitalized downtown. I am so proud of the hard work the Committee has done to make Isanti a better place.

Railroad Avenue will be completed soon marking a Milestone of City progress. The last gravel road in our community will be paved. The last four years we have accomplished the paving of our last couple gravel roads, the revitalization of Downtown, over 30 new businesses, award winning projects such as Ever Cat Fuels, Isanti Retail Meats, Farmers Market and the Water Treatment Facility which will for the first time ever protect us from the harmful radium in our water supply. There are so many more great events and projects we have in our City but as always my space is limited.

Any questions, suggestions or concerns please contact me at George@georgewimmer.com or you can reach me anytime on my cell phone @ 763-442-8749. We have an exciting year ahead of us.