Welcome, bienvenidos and ahlan wa sahlan to the Projects
Edition of District 8 eNews. Almost eight
years ago to the day, President Barack Obama signed into law the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, more commonly known as the Stimulus
bill, which invested in infrastructure across the nation to lift the economy
after the Great Recession. I mention
this anniversary of the ARRA because District 8 is in line for a little
Stimulus of our own. As part of my
discretionary budget planning for the rest of this fiscal year and next, I discovered
that several of Councilman Tom Owen’s projects from years past came in under
budget, a number of old appropriations remain unused and various accounts
reconcile greater balances than originally thought. The final totals are still being counted but
the dollar amount will range from low to mid six figures and it is money we can
put to work almost immediately. This is
great news! As I’ll explain in the
Streets Report below, I expect to reallocate the majority of these dollars for
paving, tree planting and parks projects.
District 8 isn’t awash in cash by any means, but thanks to this
windfall and Councilman Owen’s historical fiscal responsibility we head into
the next four years with savings for a rainy day (or to put toward a
significant investment) and little in the way of critical deferred maintenance. Before he left office, Councilman Owen also put
into motion many projects to be completed before the end of the year, including
paving and sidewalks, alley repair, improvements to Willow Park, a Tyler Park
Bridge preservation study and more.
As a matter of policy, I intend to prioritize District 8
discretionary spending on capital projects over events and other non-essential recurring
expenses, although I believe a mix of both are important. In some cases, this will mean reducing,
eliminating or requiring matching fund amounts to both future and past Neighborhood
Development Fund grantees. I realize
this change might create difficulties for some organizations that have come to
depend on NDF to support their operations but I have a fiduciary duty to taxpayers
that exceeds charitable giving. That’s
why I also plan to reserve 1% of our annual discretionary allowance for
internal audit and save another 10% for the reasons described above.
Another new financial policy will be to adopt discretionary budgets
identifying projects to be completed and amounts to be allocated for
non-project spending prior to the start of the fiscal year. You will be able to scrutinize my plans for
FY18 on our Data & Documents page at the District 8 website soon. In fact, I’m counting on you to do it! One of my strategic objectives is to put the
power of participatory budgeting into your hands beginning FY19 (July 1, 2018).
In the meantime, you can review Councilman Owen’s historical
spending and let me know what you think about it at:
brandon.coan@louisvilleky.gov (and please copy
jasmine.masterson@louisvilleky.gov) or 574-1108.
Finally, if you like District 8 eNews and find it informative
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Thanks Very Much,
Councilman Brandon Coan
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