Article Contributed on: 11/27/2007 2:25:44 PM
It's November and that means it's budget time at Town Hall. The Town Council will take up the 2008 budget for Castle Rock's local government on Nov. 27.
Town Manager Mark Stevens and his staff are to be commended for the hard work that is very apparent in the draft budget. They have done an admirable job of accommodating the significantly slower growth in revenues and avoiding any substantial cuts in public services and town operations.
Many thoughtful choices were apparently made in developing the recommended budget and I am impressed by the product.
That said, I intend to offer one amendment to the budget proposal. The Town is short at least one traffic police officer. Adding that officer would cost about $80,000.
I believe we should reduce the frequency of broadcast of "Castle Rock View," the town's monthly TV show, from 12 times per year to 6 times per year and that we should similarly reduce the frequency of publication of the town's magazine from a planned three times in 2008 to one time. The combination of that reduction in the town's main mass media ventures would produce almost enough money to pay for the traffic officer.
While it is important for Town Hall to keep residents informed about town events and the like, reducing the frequency of broadcast of Castle Rock View and of the number of issues of the town's magazine will not prevent that communication from occurring.
The town's able public relations staff will continue to use the local government website and, of course, both the TV show and the magazine would still be available for stories and features about the town and surrounding areas.
On the other hand, we are actually short a police officer and that officer would be assigned to keep our streets safe. Readers know that I have previously expressed my view that the town should do more to assure the safety of pedestrians, bicyclists and runners on or adjacent to residential streets and that I am particularly concerned about streets right next to schools.
Adding this police officer, which would bring us closer to the recommended staffing level for a community of our size, would help in terms of assuring more frequent and more regular police patrols for traffic law violators in our residential neighborhoods.
That, in turn, will remind all of us to ease up on the accelerator and remember that children, the elderly and the disabled shouldn't be put at undue risk of an accident when they are walking to a park, school or store.