Budget Meeting tomorrow

Tomorrow, beginning at 9am, we will be meeting to begin the tough discussions necessary to prepare next fiscal year's budget. It should be an all day meeting, and anyone who is interested and can sneak away from work for a bit I would certainly recommend attend. If nothing else, it will provide insight into the way the budget is put together each year.

Please feel free to share any comments on specific programs or services that you feel should or should not be looked into for cost-savings.

Community Input Budget Meetings

Many thanks to City staff for their hard work in scheduling two community input budget meetings to be held at the beginning of March. These meetings will offer residents the chance to learn how the budget process works, where scarce resources may or may not be allocated and other information that contributes to the very tough decisions that will have to be made during the current budgetary crisis.

The second purpose of these two community meetings, and the main reason I think these meetings are so important, is that while each department within city government is being asked to label programs high priority, medium priority and low priority, taxpaying citizens ought to have the opportunity to tell City staff their priorities in this tough fiscal time. We need to make sure that we acknowledge that sometimes staff might consider something low priority while citizens consider that very same thing a high priority. Open communication and a transparent process are vital .

The two community meetings will be held on:

Tuesday, March 3
Virginia Western Community College
6:30PM

Thursday, March 12
Roanoke Civic Center
6:30PM

I strongly encourage all those interested in providing input and understanding budgetary requirements, and those leaders throughout our neighborhoods, to come to one or both of the community meetings.

Hope to see you there!