Our Budget, Our Values
I grounded my campaign in the shared values of the 3rd District: ensuring equitable growth, preventing gentrification, practicing strong environmental stewardship, and keeping an open budgeting process. In the spirit of this fourth value, and in anticipation of the duties required of me if elected, I reviewed the Mayor’s budget proposal. The Mayor’s good faith proposal serves as a painful starting point to this two month period of budget negotiations.
The questions of how we collect and deploy resources responsibly to ensure a fiscally healthy city, and a city in which we would like to live, continue to weigh heavily on me. Ultimately, there are many ways in which we can adjust this proposal to build a stronger Lexington, I want to focus on a few significant ways that we can build on the Mayor’s proposal to live up to who we are as a city while maintaining reasonable budgetary caution. The changes that council can make to the Mayor’s proposal that I recommend below amount to less than 1% of the total proposed budget, but their impacts on Lexington’s future generations far outweigh the cost.
Fund Affordable Housing.
Ensuring equitable growth and preventing gentrification depend on the quality and availability of affordable housing. Meaning that all people who work in Lexington can afford to live in Lexington. With existing reserves and this allocation expected to fund only a single multifamily project, significant progress in the battle against homelessness will be stifled in a time when housing insecure populations are expanding. Initial recommendations in 2014 called for a yearly investment of $3-$5 million to adequately address the city’s affordable housing shortage.Council has since provided the fund $2 million. The proposed budget scales back our already under-committed $2 million allocation to the Lexington Affordable Housing Fund by 90% to just $200,000. Council should allocate as much is required to support forecasts of projects in the work for the next year, and entice future projects, up to $1 million.
Equitably Distribute Funding to Social Service Programs.
After essential government services, we must prioritize discretionary spending to create safety nets for our most vulnerable communities. The proposal eliminates the previous $2.1 million budget for the extended social resource programs, as part of the elimination of a broader $6 million fund for grants to nonprofits. We must commit to fund 50% of grant requests in the Community Wellness & Safety, and Shelter priority areas to protect homeless youth, domestic violence victims, and those whose health is at risk.
Paying for It.
The Mayor’s proposed budget withdraws $30 million from the city’s reserves and seeks $7.6 million in bonds. I support increasing bond spending to support affordable housing. Investments in housing infrastructure strengthen Lexington’s long-term fiscal health. We can fund social services through a combination of additional budget savings, and updating taxes and fees.
Additionally, I repeat others’ calls to our statewide leaders in Frankfort to advance a state Constitutional Amendment to give localities like Lexington more revenue options. Current law prevented Lexington from preparing ourselves for this crisis even during the relatively strong economy of the past 12 years.
