Fitchburg, 5-Jan-2005--City expenses, and thus taxes, will increase in a growing city like Fitchburg. Steve advocates land use policies, such as compact and mixed-use development, that can allow the tax base to grow faster than the city's expenses, thus lowering property tax rates. These same policies can make us less dependent on cars, and able to work and shop near our homes, thus reducing traffic.
Steve opposes micromanagement of city government by elected officials, and instead advocates enlightened professional management for the city and systematic quality improvement in all city departments. Steve supports damping the effect of the business cycle on city government by taxing for average years and saving the surplus in boom years to fund shortfalls when expenses spike or income dips. "Civil servants," he says, "must be protected from the vagaries of the business cycle. We need a relatively stable level of services, and city employees deserve stable employment."
"Some view government, on all levels, as evil, to be eliminated or minimized whenever possible," Steve observes. "I view local government as a cooperative or partnership, owned by all the City's residents. It's a non-profit corporation, and its employees work for us." So Steve has pitched himself into local government as an antidote for the profit-driven consumerism that dominates our culture.
Steve advocates using a transfer of development rights program to permanently preserve land for agriculture and open space, while fairly compensating landowners for their development rights. He favors the county-wide Attain Dane! program, developed by Michael Slavney of Vandewalle & Associates, and promoted by the Dane County Executive. "Fitchburg is unique in Dane County, a city with both an urban service area and ample rural land of its own," he observes. "A program like Attain Dane! will work in Fitchburg as a microcosm of Dane County."
Back to the Arnold for Alder Welcome Page
This page was last updated 18 January 2010, and has been visited 1,260 times.
Paid for by Arnold for Alder, Jeanie Sieling, Treasurer.