We're about to enter the most serious time on the municipal calendar, the annual deliberations and processes that produce a city budget. I've been a Rose City Resident for over thirty years but while the actors in speaking parts may change, the movie really and rarely does.
We all want 'nice things': good schools, paved streets, excellent public safety and infrastructure, as well as hope that somehow despite the increases in prices we see every day on every store shelf, the goods and services delivered by our local government will somehow cost less this coming year than they did this one. Spoiler alert: Guess what won't happen again this budget season?
We can feign surprise, unhappiness, and even anger but we want what we want, and it has to be paid for. Historically, humans formed government early on as a means of creating a collective (defense) to provide for individuals and we've just merrily rolled along ever since. When times were/are good, everyone smiles, and when times get tough we become unpleasant.
Perceptions of reality are reality. For every chart and index you can show me that says we are living well (albeit also well beyond our means), I can produce one that says never have so many had so little while so few have so much. And we're both right.
Sadly, until relatively recently we've been able to muddle along and compromise for something we thought was the greater good but now for lots of reasons I don't pretend to understand we prefer argument to agreement and seek to blame one another for circumstances we very much do control.
Nationally, I fear we listen too much to people on all sides of the aisle who claim government no longer works and, when elected, set about proving their own point. Locally, we have far more in common than what separates us, putting us more or less in the same boat (in all three rivers); it's usually more a question of how much we're willing to pull together on any given oar on any given day to get us to land every fiscal year.
We'll read it again real soon enough in newspapers and on social media platforms, 'this is a difficult budget season that requires hard choices,' or words to that effect. Of course it is, governance is hard work and we're lucky to have friends and neighbors willing to help do it. All the budget babble is code for having to choose between what we want and what we want right now.
Proving perhaps God does have a puckish sense of humor, our City Manager will offer his first draft of a budget on April 1. I know, April Fool's Day, though I don't think any of us will assume he is joking. Before we get to that point on the calendar, maybe a read-through of our current budget, adopted last June, will help give us a sense of perspective and proportion.
You'll find a schedule of all the hearings for all the departments here. All hearings will be live on the public access TV channel as well as available on the city's website for review.
You may have read recent news stories on the 33% increase in the city's grand list which at first read is astonishing except we had a city-wide reassessment so this year's budget formulations will be even more fraught with anxiety and concern as mill rates are recalibrated and need-to-haves and nice-to-haves, struggle for pride of place in the final calculations.
This is a year for stubby pencils and open minds and hopefully, more consensus than contention. All of us need to commit to the idea that government supports programs delivering the best quality, most necessary, and lowest cost public services for our collective good. And nothing else.
-bill kenny
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