The Next Installment of the Red Bead Experiment

The more things change, the more they remain the same and I'm never sure if I should be happy or saddened by the constancy. I know the difference between a rut and a grave is too often only the depth of the habit. 

Despite some of winter’s snow and cold looming ahead of us later this week, it could get very warm (if not heated) in the coming weeks (if the past is prologue) as our elected and appointed municipal officials work to develop a budget for our city. 

And like the ones we each have in our own households, it will not happen without arguments, agreements, smiles, frowns, and everything in between with everyone across the city, in the end, happy and unhappy at what that final document is. 

Compromise and cooperation will be critical to collective success (and at times will be in short supply). In all the years I've lived here (a quarter of a century plus), two things I've never heard from either the City Council or the Board of Education are "we have more than enough revenue to cover our needs and "we certainly won't need an increase in our requested budget." 

Instead every year we are told that 'this will be a very challenging budget season." I think we are already bracing for more of the same. Last week there were stories about the 1.7% increase in the Rose City’s grand list ($31.5 million dollars). And there were also reports on Board of Education deliberations about balancing educational needs with fiscal realities. 

Neither were isolated phenomena but are two sides of the same coin and part of the recurring realities those who serve in elected and appointed positions must attempt to manage if we are all to succeed.

The upstarts and malcontents who gathered in Philadelphia in the heat of the summer of 1776 were angry at a monarch who “erected a multitude of new offices, and sent …swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance,” declaring independence and proclaiming the function and purpose of government was to protect the "unalienable rights (of)…life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." 

So how much happiness can we stand and how much can we afford?  Instead of government at all levels working for us, we struggle to pay for it as we file our federal and state income taxes, knowing no matter how much we paid this year, next year it will be more because it's always been that way. 

But why is that business as usual?

We must both make and be the difference by being active and informed in the discussions and debates that will shape the decisions creating our next city budget. The city’s website will post schedules of hearings by every municipal department and each of us is welcome to attend. We each have two ears and one mouth and probably should use them in those same proportions to listen and speak to one another for all of us. 

-bill kenny