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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
December 20th, 2023
We concluded our last meeting of the year so Council is going on our annual break. We will reconvene the first Thursday of the year to form the Council and vote on a new President. Committee and Council meetings will restart at the end of January and early February.
At this last meeting, we did vote on a few key items:
- We overturned a decision of the Planning Commission on a development who wanted to change from townhomes to apartments in District 1. The decision barely passed the commission with a 5-4 vote and we ultimately overturned their decision.
- We voted to pass the tax increment financing (TIF) for One Park. Unlike what has been reported in the media, none of your tax dollars are going to the project. This gives them the ability to save on future tax dollars over what the current property generates after meeting determined milestones such as exceeding $200M in investment, etc. Ultimately this will bring more unique, urban, sustainable housing to our community and increase tax revenue.
- We voted on closing out last year’s budget which included a $42M revenue surplus and the city spent $15M less than budgeted. Our original budget already included language to deal with handling a surplus so it largely went to one time capital projects, increasing our ‘rainy day fund’, AND we reduced our bond needs so we are reducing the debt of the city. This is another huge step toward long term fiscal sanity in our city.
- We approved the County Clerk and Sherriff budgets. Both returned a surplus to our city and continue to operate their functions in a fiscally responsible manner.
- Finally, I did not renew the legislation regarding a potential moratorium on Floyds Fork development. This would have expired when we pass the new regulations for the Floyds Fork DRO and we expect to vote on that early next year. We don’t see any developments that could be approved in the interim and, as I have said before, I am not a fan of moratoriums as a general policy. We had it available if it was needed, it was not needed, so we are moving forward with the permanent changes to the code that will help improve the environmental protections and building sustainability of the area.
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