Budgeting Woes.

A budget is a hard thing to plan.

As evidenced by the Oct. 20 City Council meeting, not everybody can have a say in where the money goes and certainly not everybody is going to be happy. An issue that popped up at the Oct. 6 meeting was that three organizations in Greeley weren't going to be funded in the 2010 city budget and it would be extremely hard for those organizations to find the money in order to provide their services to the community.

To work around that issue the City Council is putting the city's Senior Planner position on a temporary hiring hold. This hold is going to provide the city with an extra $7,500 a month. That money is going to help the Weld County Food Bank, Envision and The Transition House, all of which provide services to the community. However, not everybody got what they wanted A Woman's Place ended up losing money to help out the other services.

Another Issue brought up by Greeley resident, George Metcalf, is that the City Council should have a bigger part in the budget process. As it stands the 2010 budget was created in 2008 during a Budget Retreat. Circumstances change and now a lot of what was planned has been revised. Roy Otto, Greeley's City Manager, oversees a great deal of this change along with Greeley's Finance Director, Tim Nash.

This process didn't sit well with mayor Ed Clark and Council members Maria Secrest and Mike Finn, who voted against approving the 2010 budget because they'd like to be able to work more closely with the budget. The budget was approved by four votes but there may be a change in that process over the horizon.

Not all problems can be solved at once, and often times dealing with money will cause more headaches than it solves.

Great. From the ground up.

Tony Belfiore put it best tonight when he said that there aren’t any constructions jobs for his company for the first time in 30 years. When a company with 30 years of clientele can’t find an opportunity to build and expand, that’s saying something about the times we are facing as a city

The first time the impact cuts were brought up in City Council, the members were hesitant about increasing the amount a new company would have to pay to build. Within good reason, increased money spending on their part will affect the number of employees that that company can hire and will drive the prices up on goods that are manufactured by the company that needs to pay the higher prices.

The issue at hand is that Greeley needs new blood in its system; it needs to find new companies that can take up residence so that we can begin to find a foothold in the economy. This isn’t the time to doll up the city of Greeley by putting more money into the trails and storm water funds, it’s time to create a stronger city that will pull potential residents from all around, whether it be business or residential.

If the Council reduced those impact fees there is a good chance that we can bring new jobs into the city. New jobs will bring people and with new people come new ideas.

That is what this city needs.