Clinton is in an uncomfortable place with regards to our budget. We have the highest residential and commercial property taxes in the region. But we have one of the smallest city budgets and city government staff of any comparable city in the region. For many years the city has just held on and muddled along financially and we have had nothing for reinvestment in roads and city services.

Gladly we are beginning to see year-on-year growth in our city's net worth. The investments of local business in expansion is going to bring more money into the city budget. From last year to this year we have experienced a five percent growth in potential tax revenues. And of course, as we all know the new ADM development will also begin to grow our budget. Although the actual tax rate for the new ADM facilities has not yet been determined, the estimate is that over the next eight years we will see somewhere in the neighborhood of a twenty-five to thirty-five percent increase in city revenues.

Our task then as council members over the next four years will be to manage growth. This is not something Clinton has done a long, long time.

When you get right down to it what my job as a technology consultant is all about just that: helping businesses find new way of doing things and adapting to change. I have over fifteen years of experience in managing change and growth.

During the campaign I have listened to people in our city government who do the budgets and assess the numbers and I am convinced that over the next five years we can lower our tax rates by a half a point per year and get down from a nearly 40 percent levee to a regional average of 37 and-a-half or less. We can do this and still do the things we need to do: pave the streets, build a new sewer system, make the city government work better and foster cultural and economic growth.