Published in the Mojave Desert News on November, 2003
City to exert "max" planning effort
BY BOB SMITH
CALIFORNIA CITY - For over fifteen years, city staff and city councilmembers have been talking about doing the king of strategic planning that bigger cities in the state take for granted. It has always gone for naught!
The main reason that nothing ever got done in the planning arena apparently was that there was never any money that could be dedicated to the projects that the planning effort would designate as being vital to the city.
As the city spins up to get its special tax renewed by the voters in March of 2004, City manager Jack Stewart is organizing a planning effort that will involve almost all of the city's staff, the California City Advisory Committee, and almost anyone else who wants to get their two cents in.
The special tax measure, the letter designation on the ballot has not yet been specified by the state who governs such things, will ask voters to approve a five year tax of $85 per parcel per year. One of the things that helped get the voter's approval in the last two elections was the fact that the Advisory Committee pored over every penny and ensured that it was spent the way the voters said it should.
This time, the city is going to go out on a limb and do the kind of long-term planning of how the capital investments, money spent on things like fire engines, water infrastructure, police cruisers and city buildings, should get spent.
"We've been talking about doing this for 15 year," Stewart told the committee last week, "And we've never done it. This is 'bread and butter' to most California cities, but totally new to us."
What the "plan" will involve is a look at not only funds generated by the special tax, if passed, but also all of the funds in the city to see where they are now, where they want to be after five years and how they are going to get there.
The working outline for the plan will be developed and distributed to city staff and the Advisory Committee in early November with the final document estimated to be ready for public hearings about the start of the year.
Stewart feels that a well thought out plan should help with the passage
of the special tax in March since it will give voters a clear idea of exactly
where the tax revenues will go.
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