‘Change is a process’

By GREG GOODNIGHT
Guest columnist

February 26, 2008 05:20 pm

— Editor’s note: The following is the text of Kokomo Mayor Greg Goodnight’s first State of the City address:
Council president Kennedy, members of the Kokomo Common Council, elected officials, distinguished guests and citizens of Kokomo, thank you.
I am here tonight to talk about the state of our great city. I am here to talk about where we have been, and where we are going. And I am here to talk about the role each of you must play in the future of Kokomo.
When our citizens went to the polls last year, they voted for a change. A change in who runs our government, and a change in the way that government runs. At the request of the voters we have a new party in charge of City Hall, a new party in charge of the Kokomo Common Council, and five new council members, of both parties.
But there are two things Kokomo residents need to realize.
First, if you expect immediate change, you will be disappointed. As I have said many times before, change is a process, and not an event. It is a process that has already begun, and it will continue in the weeks, months and years to come.
Second, we need you – each and every one of you – to be a part of that process. We can no longer afford to think of our government as something outside of our control – something we read about in the newspaper or hear about on the radio. Instead, we must think of government as something we are a part of. We must begin to take an active role in the workings of our community. We must be engaged with our government, and with each other, to accomplish more together than we could alone.
I’m a strong believer in leading by example. I know that if I want you to form partnerships and work together, I must first do the same. That’s why, in the first two months of my administration, we have already managed to re-establish ties with community members, and with fellow officials at all levels of government. For example:
• Recently, we worked with county officials on testimony before the Indiana General Assembly, where together, we spoke out against proposed legislation that would harm our ability to provide vital city and county services.
• We worked with Congressmen Dan Burton and Joe Donnelly to establish regular office hours at City Hall. Thanks to these efforts, Kokomo residents will now have monthly access to the same constituent services already enjoyed by many other communities.
• We saved taxpayer dollars by transferring maintenance of parkland along Highway 213 to the Liberty Township Trustee. Previously, Parks Department employees drove 26 miles round trip to mow 5 acres of grass. We also transferred maintenance of a linear park to the town of Greentown. Both these parks are owned by Indiana-American Water Co., but were maintained at Kokomo taxpayer expense. Now, city residents can continue to enjoy both of these community assets, at a reduced cost.
• We have created the Mayor’s Committee on Mental Health. This group, which consists of local citizens, mental health professionals and non-profit agency leaders, will help us marshal our community’s resources to protect and empower our citizens and their families who struggle with mental illness, and its effects.
• Together with the Kokomo-Howard County Development Corp., we met with officials from the Indiana Economic Development Corp. This group serves a vital role in economic development, and my administration plans to build a strong and lasting relationship with them.
• We will begin meeting monthly with the leadership of our city’s three unions, to actively seek their input and ideas. More broadly, my administration is actively enabling all of our employees to serve you better. City workers are an astoundingly innovative and hardworking group, and we would be foolish not to encourage everyone to contribute ideas, from a department head to a seasonal park worker. Just recently, Ramona Vaness, a 22-year employee of the Early Learning Center, suggested that we change our food vendor at the center. That simple, easy-to-implement idea has already resulted in billings that are 25 percent lower than they were before.
We also want to hear your ideas. That’s why we’re unveiling the Citizen’s Voice program, which creates a direct link between you and your city government. You can communicate with City Hall through the Citizen’s Voice forms that will be available at City Hall and at community events. Or, you can attend our quarterly Mayor’s Night Out and Mayor’s Night In events with the first of these events to take place March 29 at the Home Show. From then on every quarter, key city employees and I will make ourselves available after hours in City Hall, or out at another location, to meet with constituents and to hear your comments and concerns.
These meetings will also be a time for you to learn about how you can get involved, and partner with our government.
Working together is more important now than ever.
As you all know, our city is facing a potential financial shortfall that could have a real and lasting impact on the services we provide to you every day.
The worst of these problems are still looming, on a very close horizon.
But even our 2008 budget creates significant challenges for our city.
Our city’s General Fund – our main operating account – will require us to take almost $400,000 out of our already low cash reserves.
After this happens, those cash reserves will have just $460,000 remaining.
This money is supposed to serve as a cushion against unforeseen events. Independent credit rating agencies, such as Standard and Poor’s, say that this cushion should be about 15 percent of your annual revenue to be considered strong.
If you have 5 to 15 percent, that’s considered adequate.
By contrast, we will have just 1.2 percent.
At the same time, we already expect to have new, unbudgeted expenses. For example, our Controller’s Office anticipates that we will need an additional $1 million to fund our health care plan for city employees, unless costs are reduced or we find another source of revenue.
All of that is happening just this year alone. Next year is a radically different story.
The Indiana General Assembly is currently considering a proposal – called a “circuit breaker” – that would cap property taxes, beginning in fiscal year 2009.
I understand the need to limit the tax burden on our property owners, and to create a system that is stable and sustainable. However, these proposals create deep cuts in our budget, hindering our ability to provide basic services, such as police protection, fire protection, trash pickup and snow removal.
Furthermore, the plan provides no way for cities to make up for lost revenue.
The state Legislative Services Agency has estimated that the circuit breaker’s impact on Kokomo alone could be as high as $2.29 million in reduced revenue.
I have asked our city controller to immediately begin putting together a long-term budget that will address these challenges and help determine where and how the city can reduce spending while preserving essential services.
We will find creative and innovative ways to do more with less. But this will not be easy. Despite what the governor and state lawmakers are saying, recent property tax increases are not the result of increased local spending, or of special appeals to the state.
Instead, they are the result of the decision – by state lawmakers – to shift the property tax burden away from select businesses, and on to the backs of residents. They did this through elimination of the inventory tax, through property investment deductions, and through a new way of calculating business credits.
The end result is that taxes on some businesses went down, and your taxes went up.
Now state lawmakers, rather than fixing their mistake, want to shift the burden again, this time from residents to local government. But this isn’t a shift at all; it is a shell game that will result in one of two things: increased user fees, or cuts in services.
The outlook from the federal government is no brighter. This year, as he has for the past several years, the president has introduced a budget that increases defense spending while slicing funding that would help America’s cities and towns protect their citizens, develop their work force and improve housing for low-income residents.
But despite all of this, I am optimistic. I am optimistic that with the help of partnerships – between city and county office holders; between state and local officials; between public and private institutions – we will be strengthened by adversity, and emerge from this time as a stronger, more progressive, more cohesive community.
But to make that happen, we must have a new way of thinking: We must stop doing only what is best for individuals, and start doing what is best for our city as a whole.
And I am not just talking about office holders. I believe that for our city to reach its full potential, everyone – every politician, every business owner, every agency leader, every school teacher and police officer and homemaker and factory worker – has a responsibility to put the good of our community first.
By putting our community’s interest first, we can work together, and turn our challenges into opportunities.
Together, we can find a way to ensure that the library and the YMCA maintain a strong presence in our city’s downtown.
Together, we can convince all of our workers that their quality of life would be drastically improved by living right here in Kokomo, instead of commuting each day from Hamilton, Miami and Tipton counties.
Together, we can make sure that the new U.S. 31 freeway will be a community asset, and a catalyst for economic development. Further, this project may serve as a model to demonstrate how we can improve quality of life by using proper zoning and urban planning to expand our city’s boundaries.
Together, we can create a cleaner, more environmentally friendly community. My administration is examining several possibilities, including the creation of a task force to consider a citywide recycling program that could save taxpayer dollars.
Together, we can improve quality of life in our community by creating hike trails, bike paths and other amenities that help our citizens lead healthier lives. Many of our citizens desperately need universal health care, but until that happens, the best way to lower health costs and save your taxpayer dollars is by working together to create a healthier community.
Together, we can become a sustainable community, a place where people want to live and work, now and in the future. We can form a progressive community that is safe and inclusive, well-planned and well-run, that meets the diverse needs of residents both now and well into the future.
Together, we can create an economic development umbrella group that will work hard for our community, and do more than any individual group could do alone.
And together, we can tackle what is, perhaps, our greatest challenge: the need to transform our work force, and give our citizens the skills they need to thrive in a rapidly changing economy.
Manufacturing should and will continue to be a strong part of our economy. But we can no longer afford to think of ourselves as simply a city where we build things. We are – and always have been – a city where we create. At Haynes, at Delphi, and at countless smaller companies, employees are creating innovative new products and services that will, eventually, be manufactured here as well.
We must build on this strength by actively pursuing research and development firms, life science initiatives and other high-tech companies. With our county’s unique combination of open land and industrial know-how, we are also in a position to attract high-tech clean energy industries. This growing sector will create an estimated 600,000 new manufacturing jobs over the next five years, and there is no reason why we can’t bring some of those jobs to Howard County.
But to diversify our economy – and to keep up with a changing world – we must develop our work force.
That’s why I’ve created a task force, made up of key players from my administration, as well as local schools and universities. This task force will find ways to help our workers continue their education, and will empower local employers to assist in the effort.
Compared to the state and nation, the numbers are stark. Nationwide, 24.4 percent of our citizens above the age of 25 have a bachelor’s degree. In Indiana, that number is 19.4 percent. But in Kokomo? It’s only 15.8 percent.
We can do better. We must do better. We must work to overcome the physical barriers – such as transportation, available child care, and work scheduling – that prevent adults from furthering their education.
But we must also overcome the mental barriers. We must overcome the belief, held by far too many of our citizens, that education is unimportant, particularly for those in the manufacturing industry.
Many of us grew up in an economy where a sharp line divided those who work with their hands, and those who work with their minds. But that barrier is crumbling. These days, we are all expected to work with our minds.
Let me repeat that, because the future of our economy depends upon it: These days, we are all expected to work with our minds.
In factories and office buildings across America, men and women who for years were expected to simply come in, do a job, and then go home, are now expected to contribute not just horsepower, but brain power. Innovation no longer rains down from the sky. Instead, it is grown from the ground up.
We can emulate this model, by building partnerships that include local residents from all walks of life. No one has all of the answers – but everyone has some of the answers.
And so today, I challenge you to get involved in our community. Volunteer with a not-for-profit. Start a neighborhood organization. Pick a governmental meeting, and start attending it regularly. It could be the school board, library board, city council, county commissioners, or something else entirely.
We have all the resources in place to reach the next level of greatness.
We have a strong infrastructure. We have a beautiful downtown. We have a thriving park system. We have colleges that are truly dedicated to community and economic development. We have community assets like the Pipeline Skate Park and Kokomo Beach.
But most of all, we have you. We have friends and family, neighbors and co-workers, who are intelligent and innovative, compassionate and caring and dedicated to change.
But we cannot afford to sit back and expect change to happen. We need to work toward it, together. As I said, change is a process, and not an event. It is a process that requires active participation from each and every one of you.
Decide, today, that you will take an active role in our community.
Decide, today, that you will put our community before yourself.
Decide, today, that you will become a part of the process of change.
By working together today, we can make a better tomorrow for all of Kokomo.
Thank you, and God bless.
Greg Goodnight began his first term as mayor of Kokomo eight weeks ago.