FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY & TRANSPARENCY

A. Team DOJ wants to engage the services of an outside entity to review the operations of the City of Nederland to see where our taxes and fees are going and if they can be spent more economically.

B. We are interested in a system that could post all City business on the City website.  Things such as ongoing police cases, ongoing lawsuits, personnel records, and personal health records (HIPAA) must be excluded, but everything else should be easily found by our citizens.  Do you want to know how much Nederland owes on Certificates of Obligation, bonds, and other debts?  A citizen should find that at the click of a button.  Do you want to know how much Nederland spent last year on computer equipment?  That should also be available at the click of a button.  Who picked up my garbage today?  That should also be readily available.

The more information a citizen has, the more that citizen feels like he is an "owner".  Here is a history lesson: the word "citizen" comes from Latin and means, "a person from the City (meaning Rome)".  A person born in Rome or in a city considered an "extension" of Rome had rights equal to that of even the richest and most powerful people.  The people of Nederland are part-owners of Nederland.  Like a company owner can see all the financial records, the co-owner of a city should be able to see all that city's financial records.

We have become too accustomed to thinking of the government (at whatever level) as "they".  As citizens of a republic, we are the owners and the government works for us.  The City of Nederland provides things that we can't do on our own: law enforcement; fire protection; water, sewer, and garbage; streets; drainage; all the things we call "infrastructure".  This frees up the citizens to go about their personal lives and lawful activities with security.