Prosperity: How will I build a strong financial foundation for Provo City? (Once again, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Curtis CANNOT build a strong financial foundation for our community alone. He will need the help of every citizen in our community and the backing of our Municipal Council.)
Commit to economic transparency – keeping economic policy open, simple, and transparent.
The difficulty with this statement is that you will need to find a way to make economic policy “open” AND “simple” for everyone to understand. The economics behind municipal financing is not an easy subject to understand; there is a lot more at play than simply balancing your checkbook. There are different funds, bonds, revenues sources, and expenses than we have to deal with in the private sector or in our own homes. It is true that the City Council and Mayor should be forthright with our current economic decisions and make open suggestions to the people of how to rectify problems before voting. However, our Council and Mayor already do all of this. Our current problem in Provo is the apathy of people in our City to municipal processes. If more people would come to Council Meetings; talk to their elected leaders OUTSIDE of an election year; and demand responsiveness and accountability from both elected and employed personnel of the City this would never be an issue. This is, once again, a mute point that Mr. Curtis is trying to remake into his own brainchild.
Measure and identify every dollar spent with a commitment to live within our means.
This is a very sneaky way of saying that Mr. Curtis is going to micromanage everything in the City of Provo. But Mr. Curtis doesn’t want to say micromanage because it has a very negative connotation to it, as it should. When you micromanage a City, department, or personnel, you are simply attempting to “manage or control with excessive attention to minor details.” [1] Very few individuals work well under the pressure that every detail of their work, even the minor attributes of their position (like the time you take to use the bathroom) are monitored to ensure that every penny is being spent in a ‘measureable’ and ‘productive’ manner. And you know what they say, when you are so focused on the small things, you generally miss out on the big picture. Mr. Curtis has openly stated that he will ensure, under his careful watch, that there is no waste within the City, but how does he expect to do that unless he micromanages every aspect of City operations? Also, the latter part of this campaign statement, to “live within our means” is a mute point. The City Budget, by law, needs to be balanced per State Law. The Municipal Council continually, throughout the fiscal year, addressed the budget and various department heads give reports to the Mayor’s Office who, in turn, gives the updates financials to the Council. The rules and playbook are already in place to “live within our means,” unless Mr. Curtis is talking about either cutting City services that cost too much or raising taxes to meet the current financial need of our City.
Long term planning to better ensure the right type of growth, recruit good businesses, and help our current businesses prosper.
I’m honestly surprised that Mr. Curtis didn’t place his desire for a ’20-year vision’ here. For reasons I believe his 20-year vision is simply a talking point and not a real plan, please read my post John Curtis: Neither Good nor Great. [2] However, the issue that Mr. Curtis never wants to face is the FACT that the City already has measures in place for long-term planning, and his desire to speed up the processes around long-term planning show his lack of knowledge concerning the issue. You see, Mr. Curtis looks at everything in government through the eyes of a businessman, which is dangerous for the people of Provo. A city is not a business, and it never will be. A city takes the opinions, desires, and needs of an entire PEOPLE, whereas a business will start operations in a market in order to deliver a specific service or product to a specific type of consumer. A city and government, however, does not have the luxury. The City of Provo needs to deliver all services to all people of Provo in an equal and concise manner; hence the presence of a bureaucracy to ensure that rules and structure are followed to usurp attempts to the contrary.
Mr. Curtis can and will, if he is mayor, seek to recruit various types of businesses to our community. He could also make the process of starting a business here in Provo easier and assist current businesses either through changes to the administrative processes of the City or suggesting new legislation to the Council. He cannot, however, make a long-term vision or plan for the City without consent of the people or four votes from the Council. In order to do this, he would need to define what he means by “right type of growth” and how this fits into his personal vision. Want to hear about it now? You won’t have much luck, since he wants to keep you thinking of the changes you want in our City, and then he will seek to implement the changes he wants (similar to a certain candidate who extolled ‘hope’ and ‘change’, which meant a million different things to a million different people). Don’t believe me? What did Mr. Curtis state at the very beginning of this blog and how we can build a strong financial foundation in Provo? The answer: only through him.
[1] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/micromanage
[2] http://whoisjohncurtis.blogspot.com/2009/10/john-curtis-neither-good-nor-great.html
