As this calendar year closes, plans for the Holidays and "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" certainly fill our existence, but the end of a year also encourages thought about the upcoming year.  In a recent discussion of an important North Smithfield initiative, a thought came to mind that I want to make an important part of our ambitions for the next year.  That thought was No organization ever got to great by doing good enough!

The Town of North Smithfield is blessed with many wonderful people and resources.  We have come a long way since 1871, but some of our ongoing issues and debates indicate quite clearly that we have miles to go before getting to great.  Clean and plentiful drinking water, appropriate school and municipal buildings, competent fire apparatus and communications equipment, a worthy police station, appropriate roadways and recreation facilities and more are not options in a great community.  They are all important elements of that great community.  Yes, we have some financial challenges to reconcile while we face those needs, but the only way we will ever resolve each of them is to simply plan to do just that over time.  What we cannot do is fix everything in one year, but in one year we can set a plan to resolve our challenges in stages. 

Some think we can't accomplish more because we have reached the upper limit of our borrowing capacity, but that line of thinking fails to recognize that in the current budget year we are paying down $2,888,831 in principal for general fund debt and another $382,674 in principal for our sewer and water enterprises; as a result, in round numbers, we retire about $3,000,000 per year.  

When the 2014 bond questions for our paving, school and municipal building projects were advanced, a key piece of the consideration was belief that we could only afford to spend $12,000,000 on those projects because that was what we had in available debt capacity at that time.  I will certainly agree that respecting our total bonded debt capacity is vital, but just like we all do in our personal lives, we can and should plan to manage our expenses and tax rates by planning the right time for each expense. 

 Depending on the fiscal year information on which the $12,000,000 limit was calculated, we have paid down almost that same amount over the time that we have been wasting both time and money debating what to do and how to get the right project completed.  

Planning great projects that serve the town for multiple decades is possible, but we must stage them into our financial capacity.  Pushing projects forward on a "good enough" basis won't get us the resources we need to serve for decades.  Planning to complete the projects we really need as a community must be the way forward.  In 2018, it should be our ambition to recognize that no organization ever got to great by doing good enough!  Let's get to great!