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Difficult as it might have been to get the ball rolling, Marietta City Council seems now to be taking important steps toward shoring up the city's finances. Among them is discussion on establishing a stabilization fund to protect against economic downturns.
Details are still being ironed out. For example, what exactly does "stabilization fund" mean? Council has gotten a start on that, but Monday got to see drafts of five different definitions for the purpose of such a fund: reduction in local economic activity, rising unemployment and business closures, decline in tax revenues, depreciation of property values and decline in infrastructure.
Residents may be tempted to say "yes" to all of the above, but reasons for dipping into a stabilization fund must be more clearly defined than that.
For example, Councilwoman Erin O'Neill and others were right to wonder whether expenditures for floods or other natural disasters should be treated differently than those for economic downturns.
City Law Director Paul Bertram is pulling together feedback from council into a draft ordinance to be introduced next week.
In the meantime, Councilman Harley Noland correctly reminded the rest of lessons learned, and that "We need to make sure that the fund is used to stabilize the budget against cyclical changes, not to postpone difficult but necessary decisions."
There is more data to parse, more to learn from financial experts, and more to discuss before a final version of the ordinance is approved. But this council now knows a thing or two about difficult decisions and surely will steer clear of treating the stabilization fund as a means of kicking cans down the road.
Once they get the details right, this will be a vital part of what helps Marietta keep moving forward, whatever the local (and larger) economy might bring.