Joe will present with Bryan Jones and Matt Burris at the world’s largest gathering of local government professionals, the ICMA Conference - UNITE, A Digital Event. REGISTER HERE.
How to Plan for Financial Resilience and Build a More Equitable City, Starting Today
Nearly every city manager struggles to fund all the needs of their community. It is frustrating, because every budget season you realize you can't include all the programs and repairs you want to provide to residents. Planning for economic resilience is complicated and competing priorities can be challenging when making budget decisions.
In wake of the pandemic, it has never been more important to understand the impact of land use on tax revenues and costs. In this session, two city managers and a consultant will share how visualizing the relationship between land use, tax revenues, and infrastructure costs helped them plan for long term financial resilience in their communities.
City managers aren’t in control of external factors like the tax system, and you're short staffed with the programs and initiatives you're already working on. Using geoaccounting and fiscal analysis, these two city managers helped their councils and communities see geospatial financial problems clearly and simply, making policy change easier, and aligning staff in a common goal of achieving financial health. The process educated elected officials and residents on how parts of their community are subsidized, and where change is possible.
From these analysis, both cities developed new fee systems, and support for creating infill projects. Eastvale focused on creating a new downtown area, and Lancaster re-tooled their approach to stormwater fees. Both communities learned how to grow their own wealth using assets already within their control.
In the complexity of a city budget, everyone needs to understand how land use policies and infrastructure obligations influence that next hire of a firefighter or the construction of a new trail system: it is all connected. This session will show the connection visually and provide attendees with real world examples of how geoaccounting can create a financially strong future for their own cities.
Learning Objectives:
Upon completion, participant will understand land use and zoning’s effects on a city’s economic productivity and fiscal resilience.
Upon completion, participant will understand local and state tax policy’s role in shaping the built environment.
Upon completion, participant will understand how to create policy change to plan for long term financial resilience.