28 – A small city does the math on new development

Hey listeners! If you're a Strong Towns follower, don't forget that March 10 is the deadline to submit your city to the 2019 #StrongestTown contest. Verdunity is proud to be a sponsor of this year's contest. Even if you don't submit, it's a great way to learn how other cities are incrementally building financial strength and improving lives. Sign up here! ** [EDIT: The original release of this episode had some audio we meant to clip out. We've gotten that taken care of now! Re-download your episode if it's still showing up. You'll know it when you hear it. :-P Sorry about that!] Today's show (interview starts at 8:15): We’ve talked before about the importance of understanding your city’s true financial situation. For the majority of cities across the country, their development pattern has put them in a long-term budget shortfall. Our guests today are a pair of city leaders who are doing everything they can to make sure their development decisions strengthen their financial situation, rather than jeopardizing it.  Michael Kovacs and Justin Weiss are the city manager and assistant city manager for the City of Fate, Texas, a small city on the outskirts of Dallas. We talk about their transition from business as usual city management to the realization that their city’s development pattern was actually setting them up to go broke—and the way they conveyed that to staff and council to get them on board with making some pretty drastic changes. We also talk about the spreadsheet model they have been using in negotiation with developers, to steer any new development in a direction that puts them in a better long-term financial position. And we talk about their economic development strategy, which is focused on a small core footprint in the center of the town, and is geared toward small, local businesses rather than courting big outside corporations.  Link to the Curbside Chat videos mentioned in this episode: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/7/27/a-strong-towns-crash-course ** The Go Cultivate! podcast is a project of Verdunity. Learn more at verdunity.com. Find more about this and other episodes, and our blog here. (Music in this episode is from Custodian of Records and Tours.) https://www.verdunity.com/podcast/episode-28