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Mayor Fischer presented his proposed budget for
the fiscal year 2018-2019 to the Metro Council in a 40-minute address on April 26. The next day he discussed it
for 15 minutes on the second-best podcast in Louisville Metro
Government;) The day after that I spent about an hour
flipping through the 222-page Recommended Executive Budget document (I’ll be
honest: I mostly just read the capital project descriptions) – and then I spent
about 96 hours handicapping a 2-minute horse race and three days going to
cocktail parties and The World's Most
Legendary Racetrack®. Derby Week rules!
Which is all to say that my (and the Council
Budget Committee’s) diligent review of the Mayor’s proposal is just getting
started. In fact, yesterday I sat
through the first of nearly three dozen hearings scheduled over the next eight
weeks before a budget is finally approved on June 26 – these were on the topics
of projected Revenue, Operations, Capital and Debt – and there are four more
hearings this afternoon: Human Resources, Internal Audit, External Agency
Funding Panels and EAF Applicants.
I’ll be better informed and have more to say about
the budget at a later date but my hot take is that the Mayor’s proposal is
responsible, compassionate and keeps commitments – just like the man himself. I’m thrilled that it fully funds the
Affordable Housing Trust Fund ($10 million), invests heavily in young people
and begins the long road to repairing our alley system, for example.
On the other hand, I’m disappointed that other
priorities of mine don’t appear to feature as prominently in the spending plan
as I had hoped: food insecurity, new sidewalk construction and graffiti
abatement among them. So it goes. The process that remains affords me the
opportunity to advocate for these.
There is nothing in the budget I consider to be
a special appropriation for District 8, either. Part of the reason, I’m sure, is that other areas
of town need the capital infusion worse than we do, which I agree with and
support as a matter of policy. However, the
Highlands is among Louisville’s most important assets and it must be maintained
or else lose its value. (This is the same
thinking behind the
proposed Highlands Management District, the petition for the establishment of which we’re kicking-off this month.) We need a city budget that matches the investment
of District 8 residents and business owners, too.
Links to the FY19 Budget Hearing Schedule, Recommended
Detail and Executive Budget documents are available on the District 8 Public Meetings
Information page. The hearings are open to the public,
including specifically on May 15 and May 21 at 6:00pm, where we want to hear
what citizens think about general aspects of the budget (excluding specifically
EAF). Sign-up sheets will be available at
5:00pm. All hearings are also carried
live on Metro TV, Spectrum Cable Channel 184, UVERSE Channel 99 or online at the Metro Council Clerk home
page.
For breaking news and information, please follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. If you have a question or comment, please call me at: (502) 574-1108 or email: brandon.coan@louisvilleky.gov (and copy jasmine.weatherby@louisvilleky.gov). If you have a service request, please call MetroCall at: 311 or visit MetroCall 311 online. Visit the District 8 Strategic Plan page here.
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