Buchanan on track to receive $172K in state revenue sharing

Published 10:14 pm Thursday, August 25, 2011

The City of Buchanan is staying on top of new requirements in order to receive revenue sharing funds from the state.
Gov. Rick Snyder did away with statutory revenue sharing in the state’s new budget. In its place, he is introducing an Economic Vitality Incentive Program (EVIP) in which municipalities earn funding by meeting best practice standards and cost-control measures.
Buchanan City Manager Bill Marx said the city is “ahead of the curve” in meeting the requirements. Buchanan is eligible to get $172,000 in funding from the state if it meets all the targets, in comparison to the $258,000 the city received this year.
“Every community if they want their monies will have to jump through these hoops,” Marx said.
The city already has produced a “community dashboard,” which measure’s its performance in four areas: fiscal stability, economic strength, public safety and quality of life. The dashboard is available to residents at www.cityofbuchanan.com.
To earn another third of their revenue sharing, municipalities need to make efforts to consolidate services — something Buchanan has also already done by partnering with the City of Dowagiac to share waste water operators.
“We will be seeing a lot of consolidation across the state going on,” Marx said. “We can team up to reduce cost of services that are being duplicated between communities many times separated by a street.”
The final requirement involves employee compensation practices. Municipalities have until May 2012 to address that, Marx said.