Back to Richmond

I am in Richmond attending a seminar concerning strategies that local governments might use to help themselves during the budget crisis.  As one might expect, the strategies range from reasonably mundane to  downright risky.  Believe it or not and, despite our recent challenges, Manassas is in a pretty good position when compared to some of the other localities that I talked to at the conference.  To be sure, we aren’t in a happy spot but I feel as though we acted to keep our powder dry and position ourselves to emerge from the recesion with some momentum and not simply stumble along.

To give an example: a guy I talked to from southside VA indicated that his locality was borrowing money from the water/sewer fund (enterprise fund for you know-it-alls) in an attempt to keep the general fund solvent.  That, my friends, is desperation.  Another locality was borrowing against next years receivables somehow.

Also, got a chance to hear the President of the Richmond Federal Reserve speak.  He gave an interesting speech – his opinion is that economic activity will reach bottom in the middle of this year but challenges remain.  I had the opportunity to chat with him after the talk and told him that I was from Manassas and regaled him with our tale of woe.  Once I pointed out that Manassas is in NoVa, he knew exactly what I was going to bend his ear about.

On another front, I’ve got to tell you that every time I go to one of these local government things, I come away more impressed with the staff that we have in Manassas.  You get to sit in meetings with recognized subject-matter experts and I hear the same things from them that I hear from our own staff.  For example, I sat through a presentation by a senior director from both S&P and Moody’s about fund balance policy.  Their presentations were essentially the short version of what I have heard from our staff for the past several years.  I didn’t doubt Pat or her people but it is always gratifying to hear that our people are spot on.   It makes me confident that the screwy electeds won’t make lousy decisions…:)