As our economy takes on a new look as compared to the “days of money” from previous years, challenges facing your council during the budget season can appear overwhelming.

As your representative, I wish to approach the 2011-2012 budget deliberations at City Council with a better grasp as to what our community values the most so that we can best spend your tax dollars.

When the city’s final budget designates where the money will go in order to deliver services, it hopefully will represent a strong majority opinion of our community.

In order to do that, below is an informal email survey that would give me a snapshot of how you would most like to see the city’s limited funds spent. Please answer the following question and send it to the email address (budgetsurvey@aol.com) especially designated for this survey.

The results will be published at a council meeting and study session during the latter part of August prior to our city manager presenting the budget at the end of September. The deadline is Aug. 15.

Question: When formulating the 2011-12 city budgets, what are the top three priorities council should consider?

(Example; road maintenance, public safety, downtown infrastructure, environment protection, community services, or others, etc.)

Bill Knobloch

Bainbridge Island City Council