Here is information about Columbia Heights, straight from Wikipedia: The medium income for a household in the city was $40,562.  The medium household income for Anoka County was $57,754.

Here is some information about our schools straight from Food Service News:  65% of our students are on free or reduced lunches.  Compare that to statewide, 33 percent of public school students are on free and reduced lunch.

Did you notice something about this data?  Columbia Heights is not a rich city.  Columbia Heights has always been a blue-collar suburb and the majority of our homes are labeled affordable by the state. As our residents age, add to that we have a large group of retired individuals on a fixed income.

Our largest employers in Columbia Heights are Public School District 13, Crest View and the City of Columbia Heights.  Two of those three employers are funded by the households that are earning less than the average household in Anoka County.

As a city, we will not be able to sustain our current spending and it will need to be cut and cut soon because at this moment we are in freefall and will be unable to meet the basic needs of our city unless cuts are not put into effect, across the board.  Our bonded annual interest debt has increased from $118,000 to almost a million dolars over the past four years.  This is just the interest that we are paying on long term debt.  (Per CAFR 2009 report, page 19 and CAFR 2007 report, page 25.)  All of this when people are losing homes and jobs.

Let’s get our priorities right and make a difference in how our city is run.  Make sure you let the city know that they need to start making serious cuts.