FY 07-08 Budget Message

Although it didn't attract a lot of public attention, we had an important moment during this Monday's City Council Meeting--passage of the City budget for the next fiscal year!

The budget is a product of months of work, evaluation, and hard choices. It is a representation of the services we provide and a measure of new and renewed priorities each year. I invite you to take a look at my Budget Message to the City Council regarding this year's budget here or on the front page of our City website under Featured Items.

This document well summarizes the changes and adjustments made this year across the City. In addition to highlighting the new items in our budget, it provides a summary of financial accomplishments, regional cooperation, and financial information about the City. Among other financial accomplishments, we are very proud that the Government Finance Officer’s Association of the United States and Canada has voted to award our budget document the Distinguished Budget Presentation Award for the 2006-2007 fiscal year, the eighth
consecutive year receiving this honor.

The Budget Message also details new positions requested in the budget, new City initiatives (including a wellness program), information on our fund balance, an explanation of Road Use Tax fund distribution, and local economic/development activity highlights. It is my attempt to clearly illustrate how taxpayer funds are used without having to sift through a large budget document. I hope you will find it useful and informative.

Balanced Scorecard Highlight

Now that we are well into 2007, the City has been evaluating its performance in 2006. As I mentioned in my post from May 19 of last year, the City utilizes a Balanced Scorecard performance management system for this purpose. I will use this forum to occasionally highlight one of our measures from our four different perspectives: Serve Customers, Manage Financial Resources, Improve Processes, and Support Employees.

The measure below is part of our strategy to Provide Sufficient Infrastructure. The measure is a composite of three questions of the Citizen Survey regarding maintenance of city streets, buildings, and facilities; the City’s stormwater management system; and flow of traffic congestion management. This measure is intended to gauge citizens’ satisfaction with the capacity of the City’s infrastructure and how it is maintained. As you can see, both maintenance of city streets, buildings, and facilities (7%) and traffic flow management (11%) received significant ratings increases in 2006, while stormwater management received a slight 2% decline. The traffic management number, especially, is important to us because citizens also rated it as the most important service for the City to provide.



As I noted previously, we created a Strategy Map to coordinate the City's measures that identifies the strategic themes of our organization, which can be found in the Balanced Scorecard Brochure on the http://www.wdm-ia.com/ homepage under Featured Items.

Hy-Vee Triathlon

In case you haven't heard, we have a pretty exciting event coming to the metro area (and even "treking" through West Des Moines!) this summer. On June 17, athletes from around the world will gather in Central Iowa to compete for the largest prize purse in triathlon history: $700,000. The inaugural Hy-Vee Triathlon will take place in Des Moines and West Des Moines. The Hy-Vee Triathlon components include a 1.5-kilometer swim, a 40-kilometer bicycle ride, and a 10-kilometer run, all distances that match those for the Olympic event.

The Des Moines area is only the fourth in the United States to host a World Cup elite triathlon since the competition began (Honolulu, New York City, and St. Petersburg, Florida are the others). The prize purse for the World Cup event will be the richest ever on the elite triathlon circuit. First-place winners in the men’s and women’s circuit will each take home paychecks of $200,000. It will also be the only World Cup triathlon event held within the United States in 2007. For some US athletes, it will be the first chance their families have had to watch them compete live!

The concurrent citizens’ race—the Hy-Vee Triathlon—is open to enthusiasts of all ages. The Triathlon will offer a $5,000.00 prize purse to the overall age group (amateur) competitor and $40,000 worth of gifts and prizes for these riders. Anyone interested in participating in this race, individually or as part of a relay team, should visit www.hy-veetriathlon.com for registration information and to learn how you can volunteer or simply watch this amazing event for our area!

I will have more information about the triathlon, including specific course information, road closing info, and other events taking place in conjunction with the triathlon, as we get closer to the race. Keep looking!

A Year of Blogging/Challenge Grant

I have officially been blogging for a year now, and it's been a great experience so far. The only thing I would change is to get more feedback from you! It's great to see people taking advantage of the links in my posts--there is excellent information out there in many different formats and forums.

Coinciding with this "one year anniversary" is another celebration for our City. We got good news early in 2007 when notified we were to receive a Challenge Grant awarded by the Iowa Department of Economic Development. The $60,000 grant will be utilized, along with City funds reaped from the existing Tax Increment Financing District in the area, to provide fire protection sprinkler system infrastructure for the Valley Junction Business District.

The Valley Junction Foundation would like to see greater utilization of the upper story spaces in their buildings, as well as more restaurants locating to the Business District. A sprinkler system is essential to meeting these goals. The cost of installing a sprinkler system in an older main street building is significantly higher than for new construction, and this grant will cut sprinkler system costs for the landowners and merchants in the district.

This is the first step towards the installation of sprinkler infrastructure throughout the remaining buildings in the District if found to be successful in fulfilling the Foundation's strategies. Great thanks to the Iowa Downtown Resource Center and Main Street Iowa, as well as Senator Tom Harkin and Governor Chet Culver, who were present for the award presentation.

Welcome Mayor Messerschmidt!

I'd like to welcome long-time West Des Moines resident Rick Messerschmidt to the West Des Moines City government! Rick was appointed Mayor of West Des Moines by the City Council after nine candidates were interviewed for the position last week. Mayor Messerschmidt was sworn in last Friday, February 1, and he will serve until the next election.

Mayor Messerschmidt is president and chief executive officer of First Bank in West Des Moines. He was born in West Des Moines and graduated from Valley High School. Mayor Messerschmidt has truly been an active civil servant throughout this time, serving on numerous boards and commissions. It is obvious that he loves West Des Moines and wants to make it the best it can be.

Residents and interested parties attended a swearing in ceremony to welcome Mayor Messerschmidt February 2 in the City Hall Council Chambers. To view a video of the Swearing In ceremony (it's under ten minutes) click here.