 |
Have a question or comment for me? I’ll be participating in a “Mayor’s Forum”, taking questions from the Connect2Edmonton membership during the week of February 2nd, 2009. Please visit www.connect2edmonton.ca and sign up to participate.
I look forward to hearing from you!
|
|
 Back to Business at City Hall
Now almost one month into the New Year, it’s a great chance to check on our resolutions and really get back to business. But there is a lot of uncertainty as we look forward. That means we need to be sure we are all in a position to react to the economic changes and remain flexible.
That's why I was so concerned with the 2009 budget process and why we now have to ensure we can make smart financial decisions.
 Here's some ways I think we can do this:
- We need to survey city programs to ensure that activities that are no longer aligning with the city's overall strategy are phased out and resources redistributed to priority areas, as per our Strategic Plan, which sets our priorities and direction.
- Improve the budget process by starting to plan for budget 2010 now, and to ensure we are prepared for economic fluctuations and have time to adjust.
- Council has authorized a lot of borrowing, but we can still be smart about our timing - we can wait until we hit the bottom of the deflationary cycle before the big amount of borrowing happens. We can borrow incrementally, only actually initiating the borrowing when we are ready to spend - so we can avoid taxing our citizens too soon.
- We still need to do more to improve our project management and the overall efficiency of projects we bring forward. We need to be sure we don’t create a massive new bureaucracy, just to manage all this spending.
We must also realize that we’re going to come out of any downturn. Yes, there is a slowdown in the economy and we must weather the storm, but we also must continue to grow and improve as a City and continue to promote Edmonton world-wide. We will continue to pursue the 2015 Summer Universiade and we will continue to investigate the 2017 World’s Fair bid, both of which would be great opportunities for us to showcase Edmonton around the world. Keeping up our investment in the critical infrastructure and services our city needs will also be important.
If we can remain lean and efficient, we will be able to continue the advances we have made so far, and by addressing these tough issues, we can build the city’s foundation and be prepared for tomorrow. |
|
