CITY CORNER by Mayor Brent Hinckley

     Each year, during certain months, there are activities and decisions that need attention.  While most of the people of Mason see September as a time for the kids to go back to school and a time to enjoy the excitement of Friday night football, at the City and other local governmental groups we have another task.  Each September we, the elected officials, must complete our annual budget discussions and finally approve the plans for spending public funds for the coming year, and determine just how we will raise those funding needs.  Thus, the second part of the decision making is to set the property tax rate that we will all pay on our real estate and homes during the coming few months.  Both of these decisions must be made before the end of September, and the City Commission is expecting to approve the annual budget and the tax rate at our regular meeting on next Monday, September 16 when we meet at 5:30 at the Eckert Civic Center. 

     The City Commission has been discussing the budget needs since last May during each of our regular meetings as well as two afternoon workshops and in some individual conversations in the City offices with the City Administrator, so there are no surprises in the many individual line items that make up the budget.  In addition, the final proposed budget was filed with the City Secretary on August 15 and has been available to the public since that time.  However, there is still one portion of the funding and construction that the City is expecting during the next year that is not fully known at this time, and this portion covering the construction costs of the initial phases of the new landfill will have to be carefully considered and approved later as a budget amendment.  We have included in the budget the engineering contract costs for construction design and oversight since those costs are known, but until the plans and specifications are complete and we receive construction bids for the various phases of this project, we only have general estimates and do not have accurate costs to include in our current budget.  We have talked about these costs and we have some reasonable assumptions that we are working on, but the final numbers will be gathered over the next few months and will then be presented to the public and to the Commission for discussion and approval as adjustments to the current proposed budget.

     If you want to be aware and informed of the discussions and actions of your City government, please come next Monday to our regular meeting, or listen in on KHLB 102.5 radio.  There are a few other “housekeeping” items on the agenda in addition to the budget, but I certainly do not expect anything of a controversial nature so it should be a relatively quiet and short meeting, compared to the past few.  With a complicated decision behind us, the City staff and elected officials are looking ahead to work out specifically how to build the needed landfill to best serve our community and to move forward with the other projects that will continue to improve and meet the needs of our residents.  Mason is a great hometown, and our commitment is to continue the progress of that past years, and make our community even better for the future.