Why I Am Running For Charlottesville City Council

The last City Council budget cycle caught my attention. In a bad way. I am a private citizen with no history of political involvement. So many City Council budget decisions make me cringe that I became concerned about how the Council made decisions with regard to spending taxpayers' money. In a nutshell:

• setting aside a million dollars of taxpayer money to start a new City ambulance service in parallel to the current CARS system seemed premature, excessive, and ill advised.
• unspent tax revenue from past fiscal years is called 'excess revenue' and is held aside for future City spending.
  
• Council quibbled over how much to cut our property tax rates, but ended up just setting a less high tax increase than they had first planned. They decided to raise our property taxes again. They have raised our taxes year after year after year. I do not support this way of thinking.
• During the recent real estate home price bubble, millions of dollars in extra taxes were generated. Rather than recognizing this, City Council just scooped up all the taxes and devised ways to spend them. When they could not spend all the money they got from property taxes, they held on to it to spend later. Never did they offer tax rebates to all taxpayers. They refer to this as 'excess revenue' instead of over taxation.
  
• Since I decided to run, I have seen more fiscal decisions from Council which I do not support- such as the targeted tax break program they decided was too complicated for the tax payers to understand, so they canceled it after suggesting it Gee, nice work. You are keeping all the money because you can't think of an effective way not to keep it? Please.
• Paying attention to how the City spends money has lead me to look hard at our budget. The City pays a great deal to support the lifestyle of the greater Charlottesville community. Is doing that what we want to do? There is little discussion of what we do, and why we keep doing it. I hope to add to the level of public scrutiny about:
  

1. How we share projects with the County,
   
2. The pros and cons of reversion to town status and becoming part of the County,
   
3. The status of the revenue sharing agreement. The County is much better positioned to enhance its tax flow from commercial establishments. Long ago the City agreed to stop annexing County land. Is that decision still reasonable today? Does it make sense to stay this land locked, while the commercial tax base of the County explodes?
   
4. Does it makes sense fiscally to have two separate systems of governance and service, like schools, police, water, public works, etc.?

I see myself bringing fiscal conservatism and pragmatism to the City Council. My focus will be on why and how we spend taxpayers dollars. I am very concerned about how and why the City is shouldering such a large share of the burden for setting the cultural and aesthetic tone for this community.