More Budget Analysis

It is the beginning of the budget season for Georgetown as they develop the budget for FY-2017, which begins October 1, 2016.

It is worth examining the trends in budget growth and debt growth over the past ten years. The rationale for the excessive, in my view, budget and debt growth is two fold. First, the population in Georgetown is increasing by eleven people per day. Secondly, the infrastructure has to be built before more people arrive so that more people will come to Georgetown.

To remove the population growth from the equation, let us examine the budget growth per person and the debt growth per person over the last ten years.

Even though the budget growth per person is somewhat "lumpy", the trend shows a compound growth rate of 4.17% over the last ten years. While the debt growth per person shows a 6.19% compound growth rate.

We need one more piece of information to adequately assess these growth rates and that is the inflation rate.

The compound growth rate for inflation is 1.76%

Now it is clear that the budget per person has been growing at 2.4 times the rate of inflation.

The debt per person has been growing at 3.5 times the rate of inflation. 

Thus, it is clear that the City debt and budget are both growing at far greater rates than would be expected to accommodate both population growth and inflation. It appears that both the budget and debt growth rates should be scaled back or the citizens will be burdened with higher taxes and fees in the future.