There is good financial news shining on City Hall these chilly spring mornings, and that is what City Councilperson Meghan Sahli-Wells would be telling a League of Women Voters audience about at a luncheon today at the Julian Dixon Library.
“I will start with the five-year budget forecast that is much rosier than it was at this time last year,” Ms. Sahli-Wells said.
“This is thanks to the half-cent sales tax increase that is going into effect in less than two weeks, on April 1.
“Instead of having a deficit of between $5 million and $8 million the next five years, completely depleting our reserve fund, we are going to be in the black within a year.”
Ms. Sahli-Wells will tell the League ladies that other factors have contributed, “staff reductions, and renegotiating retirement and hiring terms. But here is the math on the new sales tax: It is expected to raise $8 million a year, and our deficit was running at $8 million.”
Then Ms. Sahli-Wells will turn to one of her favorite projects –consolidating City Hall’s every-other-year April elections with the School Board’s every-other-November elections to save the city money and grow the voter turnout.
“I thought that talking to the League of Women Voters is a good idea,” she said, “because this is what they do. They want to encourage people to vote.”
The Council member suspects that voter fatigue has set in from seeming back-to-back-to-back election cycles.
“We are asking people to go out and vote several times year,” Ms. Sahli-Wells said. “People tune out. They stop paying attention.”
She invites opposing opinions (at meghan@ccnan.org), but “I haven’t heard any compelling reasons yet.”
