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$103M budget aimed at revitalization
By BRIAN PORTER/Managing Editor
Sales tax is on a steady decline in Mesquite and property owners are beginning to shoulder more of the tax burden to operate the city.
The proposed fiscal year 2007-08 budget from city manager Ted Barron asks the Mesquite City Council to aggressively seek new development and begin practices which would balance the tax burden in the future.
“This budget does reflect a shift in philosophy,” Barron said. “We will begin aggressively defining the future with this budget.”
“We’re committing in this budget to improving quality of life,” Barron said.
The shift in philosophy is a simple one. Mesquite will no longer wait for development to occur and to be approached by developers for projects. The city will actively seek out development and also fund renewal projects.
“We’re taking charge of our future and no longer satisfied with games coming to us,” Barron said.
Perception is reality and the budget will address the appearance of the city, including funding to repair broken curbs, medians and what Barron terms “aboveground infrastructure.”
The city will add two sanitation employees, five police officers and two public service officers to put more officers on the street.
“We have not stopped growing,” Barron said. “We want to maintain our reputation as a safe community.”
The budget includes the upgrade of an intern position to an emergency management position and one public recruiter. It also includes a strict adherence to a city marketing strategy.
“We will no longer allow or tolerate others to define who we are,” Barron said.
Sales tax began to flatten in 2003, according to Barron. He says many cities saw it happen as a result of 9/11.
“After that, we saw other communities recover,” he said.
The proposal to allow sell of beer and wine for off-site consumption is being touted by Save Our Stores as one means to increase sales tax. The other is that which Barron proposes. He wants to designate spending in the budget to help recruit new business and add to the sales tax roll.
“We’ll spend a half million dollars in this budget on how we look,” he said. “If we are to attract new business, we have to look newer.”
The city unveiled the new logo with the marketing phrase “Mesquite, Texas. Real. Texas. Flavor.” more than a year ago and continue to transition. There are still city vehicles with the old logo, while more changeover has been seen.
“We haven’t really gone out and marketed our new logo,” Barron said.
He insists the change in philosophy will not result in anything left behind. Barron says there are no downgrades in this budget, but a complete refocusing effort into areas to renew Mesquite.
That means 1,106 full-time equivalent employees will all be focused on marketing Mesquite and helping to renew the community. Seventeen full-time positions have been added with this budget.
The $103 million budget is a 3.13 percent increase aimed at changing the financing of the city.
“We need to get higher sales tax than property tax,” Barron said.
The city is supported by 60 percent property tax, opposed to 40 percent sales tax. Of the property tax, it is estimated that 60 percent is residential, putting the greatest burden on the residents to finance the city.
While there has been a sentiment that Mesquite has little place left to grow, Barron disagrees. He says there are areas which can be developed. For instance, the former location of Big Town Mall remains vacant. There is vacant land next to the Mesquite Championship Rodeo. There are many similar parcels of land around the city, not even including the recently annexed land in Kaufman County.
He finds that there is little reason business wouldn’t come to Mesquite. A survey indicated that half the people outside of Mesquite didn’t have an opinion of Mesquite.
There have been some recent projects which indicate what the city wants to happen. The new animal shelter, reconstruction of Fire Station No. 1 and the ongoing construction of the new police station are among those. There is also the construction which took place on Military Parkway at the entrance to old downtown.
“It all started in 2004 with Addressing Mesquite,” Barron said. “It is an evolution. It wasn’t the focus of the budget until now.”
There are areas around the state with which Barron’s objective could compare. It takes a sampling from cities like Arlington, Farmer’s Branch and Round Rock to get to where Barron wants Mesquite to be.
“I really don’t want to be like any suburb,” Barron said. “I want to be new and unique.”
He realizes there is work to be done to get to that place. An instance occurs along U.S. 80, where motels have fallen in disrepair.
“If we bring development in and it has success, it will drive other opportunities,” Barron said. “It is a challenge. We’re up to it. This is more of a philosophical shift than a budgetary shift.”
Contact Brian Porter at bporter@acnpapers.com or comment on this story at www.scntx.com.
The following are comments from the readers.
In no way do they represent the view of Starlocalnews.com
In no way do they represent the view of Starlocalnews.com
Ava wrote on Sep 14, 2007 11:36 AM:
" The new logo? It says to me, "Lick Mesquite, We're GOOD!"
HA!
"
Mark wrote on Sep 18, 2007 12:04 AM:
" Mesquite may have a rep. as a safe community but that's the average only. We lived in the target area of "Addressing Mesquite" and saw the decline of that neighborhood over the years. A tv news story this week highlighted the Masters/Bruton area in Dallas as having a high number of burglaries, and it should remind us that crime doesn't stop at city limit signs. Dallas has well known crime woes and unfortunately it's affecting the quality of life in parts adjacent to Mesquite. That needs to be "addressed".
Using beer/wine sales as the fix-all for our tax problems is a band-aid that will introduce a new set of problems, and seems to me like a lazy way to attract new business. Mesquite deserves better. "
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