Dear Minot:
The budget process at the City of Minot is a long process that involves countless City employees and elected officials. We’ve come to a critical point in the process, and we need your help.
A public hearing on the budget is scheduled for Monday’s City Council meeting, which begins at 5:30 p.m. in City Council chambers. If you want to share your opinion with Council members, you can do it at that meeting or by contacting us through email or a phone call. Our contact information can be found here: https://www.minotnd.gov/252/City-Council.
If you can’t make it to Monday’s meeting, council meetings are also streamed live on the City’s Facebook page, on the City’s YouTube channel, and on local cable television channel 19. The proposed 2024 budget can be found on the City website: https://www.minotnd.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/648.
We want your input. Our system of government works best when residents are engaged and active with their elected leaders. I support and encourage respectful, thoughtful, solution-based engagement. We’re all aware that there are Minot residents who disagree with the construction of the 2024 proposed budget. It’s impossible to create a yearly budget that makes every resident in Minot happy, yet that is the job we are tasked with as elected leaders.
I thank the residents who have been engaged with us so far in the 2024 budget process. Your input has been valuable, and we look forward to hearing from more of you on Monday. I encourage you to make your thoughts known by attending Monday’s Council meeting, or by providing us with your feedback through an email, text message, or a face-to-face visit.
But I also caution residents with this reminder: As a City council, we must balance the needs of the organization and of the community, while still keeping our eyes on the future of our city. Residents often provide feedback on budget items that make us rethink our process and our decisions, but there are also times that we have to accept and respect our philosophical differences. It’s OK to have a healthy, reasonable discussion about the budget, and in the end still have areas of disagreement. We must build a budget that is best for all of Minot.
As an organization, the City of Minot is not immune to what is happening around our country. As many residents and business owners struggle to adapt to the rising costs of doing business and maintaining a household budget, the City must also find creative ways to do more with less. Our staff members and department heads take their responsibilities seriously, and we routinely task them with providing budget requests that are necessities, not luxuries.
City staff members and Council members have worked together again this year to craft a budget that is manageable, responsible, and forward-thinking. It’s never an easy process. We’d love to put more money in our infrastructure and road repair budgets, for instance, but we simply can’t afford to do that. Those needs aren’t going away any time soon, but there’s only so much we can dedicate to road projects in a given year. Projects of all types, large and small purchases, and hiring of additional employees are often delayed simply because of funding. The 2024 budget is no exception.
These are the decisions we face every year as elected officials. We know before we release the preliminary budget every year that the document won’t please everyone in Minot. But we’re confident we’ve created a budget that provides the necessities to maintain essential City services while also keeping a watchful eye on the road ahead of us. Is it perfect? No. But it represents our collective best effort to encourage the continued growth of our community, and to ensure that our residents continue to receive the best services possible under the real-life constraints of a municipal budget.
You can find more about what’s happening at the City of Minot at minotnd.org, or find us on Facebook and Twitter. We’d also encourage you to sign up for our monthly electronic newsletter on our website.