Mario Morana

SW-314
Dr. McMillan
4/18/16
Town Hall Meeting Sterling Heights
I recently attended a town hall meeting in my city of Sterling Heights.
This meeting was held at the City Hall Council Chambers, on Utica Road. The
meeting that I attended discussed over various subjects of Sterling Heights.
The mayor, as well as other city officials was all sitting up at the front of the
conference room where they spoke briefly and addressed everyone in
attendance. They went over rules and policies that they must follow, as well
as the policies the audience must follow. The primary focus of the meeting
was the introduction of the new fiscal year of 2016-17.
The meeting started by the council members playing a brief video
describing the fiscal budget. The fiscal budget in Sterling Heights covers
over 170 million dollars for the 2016-17 campaign. This money is split up
and divided in ways that will help out the city in various facets. The 170
million dollars go towards; public safety, construction, repairs to roads,
neighborhood street repairs etc. The panel did a great job explaining how the
money was divided by area of concern. Out of the 170 million, 92.3 million
dollars is made up by businesses and residents. Businesses pay about one
third of this, while residents pay for the other two thirds. These property
taxes include schools, police department, fire department and other public

services. 47.3 million dollars is spent on the sewer and water operations
where water is monitored to make sure everything is clean and orderly. The
money is spent for workers as well as up keep of our sewer system. 18.4
million dollars is spending on special revenue funds, which include
construction of roads, and different bridge projects around the city. 9.1
million dollars is spent towards capital fund projects which contain certain
governmental funding projects. While 3.1 million is spent on debt services.
Money left over is distributed throughout the year to areas of concern when
and if needed such as neighborhood road repair, side walk repair etc.
They then broke up the money residents pay per household. They
explained how each house hold in Sterling Heights spends about $82 dollars
per month to pay for city taxes. They then broke it down even further to tell
us how this $82 dollars was dispersed. They stated that $33 dollars was
distributed to the police department, they accounted for the most money
since they have to deal with up-keep of vehicles, new training of officers, etc.
They said we pay $15 dollars per month towards our fire department, which
will pay for maintenance of fire houses, repair of trucks, and new training of
fire fighters. They discussed how residents spend $13 dollars per month
towards public works which account for some water funding along with
improvements to city used facilities. Finally, residents in Sterling Heights pay
only a mere $4 dollars per month for the up-keep of our public library, this
includes buying of new tables, chairs, and renovations to public restrooms in
the library. They did not describe how the other $17 dollars out of the

beginning $82 was spent. I figured it was spilt over into the miscellaneous
category where they can distribute to areas of concern as I stated earlier. At
the end of the presentation the panel gave the power to the people to raise
questions on where they think the money could go. Each person got up and
voiced their concern while the city officials took notes and put it under their
considerations.
Overall, I believe this was a good experience sitting down and watching
one of these meeting unfold. It was nice to see how professional these were
even with the lack of people in attendance. City officials took this very
seriously and issued many points of concern. Watching how city officials truly
care about what their citizens thought, was a primary area that I took away
from this. Having citizens voice their complaints are as much of importance
as anything else in the city.