F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”  Fall brings, with its changing colors, the hope of change and the possibility of a new season with a new year just around the corner, and a fresh start. There is a special nostalgia that fall carries with it and a feeling that anything is possible.
With Fall upon us, the City of Monte Vista is making preparations for the upcoming new year and a new beginning. Among these preparations are the 2019 budget and addressing changes to better serve the constituents of the city. To best describe a budget, it can be looked at as a culmination of past decisions, current investments, combined to reach a future vision. The City of Monte Vista uses a three-year budget process, which means we look at the last three years of actual revenues and expenditures, an average of those over the three years, which makes sure the implications of budget decisions beyond the current year are understood and create sustainability.
The concept of sustainability has a key component. For a government to reach its goals and vision, it needs resources, which boils down to money. Across the country, small municipalities are feeling the crunch of fewer resources and having to get creative in doing more or even the same with less. The City of Monte Vista is no different. The preparation of the 2019 budget was met with struggles in determining how to continue to provide current services, expand our services, and do all this with an expected decrease in revenues. However, through teamwork from each department in the city, the 2019 budget is shaping up to be productive, resourceful, and provide long-term sustainability for the city.
For a city to be sustainable there is a need to strive toward a vision through long-term goals and short-term decisions. The city’s vision is to create opportunity, growth, and a fertile and safe haven for education, recreation, business, and families to thrive. It is our goal that the 2019 budget will help us reach our vision on both a short term and long term level.
The last piece in creating a budget that produces sustainability is to create accountability. As we move forward in 2019, our departments are tasked with the goals of tracking day-to-day budget implementation and monitoring. We are working on putting tools in place that will help department heads know where they are in their spending to ensure that we remain on track with the budget.
We are hopeful that 2019 will be the city’s best year yet. As we close out the 2018 year, Lauren DeStefano summed up this time of year perfectly. “Fall is the time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale”. With that being said, here is to a grand finale and a great opening act in 2019.