Taxpayer Land Acknowledgment

We acknowledge that the work conducted at our municipality takes place on land sustained every day by taxpayers. Every service, regulation, office, and program tied to this institution exists because millions of ordinary people exchange hours of their lives for wages, and a portion of those wages funds the entire public structure around us.

We recognize the small business owners, workers, families, and retirees whose labor underwrites this modern system. Their contribution is not symbolic. It is material, ongoing, and compulsory.

In acknowledging them, we also accept a responsibility: to use their resources with restraint, efficiency, and humility, and to remember that public institutions do not own this land or this system. They are tenants of the people who pay for them.