I wanted to provide a little more data to a post I made last week. Following the January 20, 2020 West Fargo Commission meeting a resident made a somewhat misleading post claiming the city commission handed out over $30 million in Special Assessments without any discussion. This is misleading because no Assessments were given out and the discussions go back as late as 2015 on … Continue reading Understanding the Assessment Process
I’ve written on this topic before (Fair Assessments and Specials are not Special) but I wanted to provide a few quick thoughts on Special Assessments given a flurry of Facebook posts today. “He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.” – The Art of War First, contrary to popular opinion fighting a Special Assessment at the tail end of a … Continue reading Pain in my Assessment!
On Monday, August 5th the West Fargo City Commission approved the preliminary budget for 2020. What this means, is that the overall mill levy from the city can’t be further increased beyond what was set in this meeting. The city can still tweak the budget or lower the mill levy (if possible) but the maximum mill levy is set for 2020. The mill levy for … Continue reading 2020 Preliminary Budget Set
What’s missing far too often in today’s society is accountability. Few people fired from a job want to take accountability for the outcome. In politics, fewer want to be accountable but everyone is quick to point the finger. So, it should come as no surprise that free college education is being thrown around as an idea to ‘fix’ our broken college system. Let me be … Continue reading Investing in Education
West Fargo residents ask me all the time about Special Assessments. It goes without saying that the general attitude towards specials is that they are not very special. Here is a quick overview of the common discussion points. People would love to get rid of specials; however, the money still needs to come from somewhere. That could be higher lot prices, higher utility fees, higher … Continue reading Specials are not Special
At tonight’s West Fargo City Commission meeting we discussed the desire of the West Fargo Park District to sell/develop the Beaton Farm property. This is unchartered territory for the Park District to sell what many consider to be a park. This land, donated to them for public good, is a result of work done by previous city commissions to require developers to provide land for … Continue reading Parks and Zoning
gjerdevig.com 