City aims to create opportunities for growth
It’s no secret that Huber Heights has been fortunate to create many successes out of the opportunities made available.
As mayor, I have worked to make sure a core principle of economic development is to create economic growth in the business sector to reduce the tax burden on the individual. In order to make sure we continue looking forward, we must look beyond capturing opportunities and begin creating opportunities for economic growth to meet that goal.
The 2020 budget process for Huber Heights was presented with a focus on forward-looking trends.
As a city government, it is our responsibility to provide the highest quality of services with the lowest possible burden on the taxpayer. One analogy given was flying a plane: to keep it in the air, it needs fuel. So flying efficiently extends the flight time, and when the fuel runs low, you must land to avoid crashing.
As a city, there are service operations that must remain in flight and demand a constant source of fuel. If we don’t seek ways to provide more fuel to sustain our flight, eventually we run out. In other words, if a city government isn’t constantly challenging itself to reduce costs (fly more efficiently) and identify funding to match the increase costs of operations (refueling), then it usually results in an increase of taxes.
Huber Heights created the Transformational Economic Development (TED) program and fund to provide the resources for targeted and planned opportunities of economic growth. Using funds that otherwise cannot be used for general operations of the city, the TED provides the resources to conduct activities such as land purchases, planning studies and development efforts that in return grow the economic base of the community.
This growth of the economic base is intended to provide the needed revenue to support the increase in cost of service operation for the city. In other words, it provides the fuel to keep us in sustained flight without placing additional burdens on the taxpayer.
As city leadership discussed the 2020 budget, we confirmed that we need to stay innovative, because staying stagnant will lead to the increase in the cost of service overtaking the revenue. Our innovative TED has already been put into motion with the recent purchase of land on Executive Boulevard adjacent to the new Parkview development.
As part of the TED program, we have contracted a comprehensive potential markets and demographics study to provide for the planning of targeted opportunities for the land to create and maximize our economic growth opportunities. I am proud of the innovation and transformational thinking our leadership team has accomplished for the benefit of Huber Heights.
We continue to fly that plane!