Postcards From The Road

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Our campaign team has covered much ground and met with many voters since I filed to run for Morrisville Mayor in early July. What we have heard over the past 11 weeks has come as no surprise. Town wide, in neighborhoods new and established, residents have shared the same concerns: Our desirable small town is losing it's charm to a very large traffic problem. Property owners are worried about a repeat of last year's 19% tax increase proposal and they want storm water and flooding issues addressed. They aren't thrilled that their water and sewer bills have gone up to help pay for growth. And they want responsiveness, not rhetoric, from their elected officials.

Our residents are right - we can do better. We have not encouraged sustainable growth that we can afford. We have not made roads and transportation safety a priority, nor have we developed what stands in the way of addressing our traffic woes: a viable cost sharing plan.

Together, we successfully fought last year's proposed 19% property tax increase. And we can, together, begin the process of addressing the issues we face in our Heart of the Triangle community. Election Day is November 3rd.

Jackie

A Penny Saved, A Penny Earned - Responsive Leadership

If sign farms are sprouting like kudzu, it must be election season. They are. It is. And this year's theme: fiscal responsibility.


By the looks of Morrisville's fund balance projection, there's good reason to be talking fiscal responsibility. A town savings account or "fund balance" that drops below zero (the blue line on the graph) is not a good thing. Not at all. Yet at present, the town's plan is to spend more than we take in. Fiscal responsibility? No. No.

Based on a years long pattern of overspending, our taxpayers narrowly escaped what would have been an economically devastating 19% property tax increase last year. But what about the above graph? Does this mean we have no choice but to raise property taxes to the level supported by Faulkner, Stohlman, Johnson and Snyder?

No. We can turn this around with Responsive Leadership.

We must employ conservative fiscal management of taxpayer funds and we need to start soon. We must set clear priorities based on funding needed services. We then have to stick to those priorities. And we must acknowledge that raising property taxes to fund parking lots and multi million dollar greenways is not in the best interest of residents or businesses.

These are tough economic times. With responsive leadership, we can weather them. That's why I'm asking for your vote on November 3rd.

Jackie