Charting a Course

Now that we've had three weeks or so to catch our breath (scout for exits perhaps and count our spare change) I heard someone suggest the other day that the best thing about City Manager John Salomone's budget proposal was that it wasn't worse. (No definition of ‘worse’ was forthcoming; I waited.)

I always think of a German expression that translates as 'better a horrible end, than horrors without end.' Point in fact, the City Manager’s proposed budget is not horrible and it's NOT an end, but rather, the necessary starting point to begin a dialogue and discussion (that may get raucous and ill-tempered but that's part of it) which should drive the development and adoption of a(ny) final budget. 

The City Manager was doing his job, and it’s not just the City Council members who must now also do theirs. It’s each of us, and all of us; residents, businesses, taxpayers, luckless pedestrians, whatever you wish to consider yourself.

Any spending document the size of the proposed budget has a lot of moving pieces and a lot of requirements for oversight and coordination. And since you can't tell the players without a scorecard, you can find all of this year's budget documents online. (There are also previous years' budgets for comparison).

If you'd like your very own copy to have and to hold, you can buy one at the City Clerk's office. This is a blinding glimpse of the obvious: A proposed budget tells us what things cost; only we can decide what they are worth. It’s up to us to choose between what we want and what we want right now. No one, including all in city government, elected or appointed, wants to pay more in taxes for goods and services. 

As I will keep saying because we have selective hearing, this is an ongoing discussion we will/should and must have with one another, our city's department heads, and our elected officials as we craft a blueprint, a roadmap (call it what you will) by which we determine the quality and quantity of municipal services, ranging from public education and public safety to trash removal and road resurfacing and everything in between, and what we are willing to pay for those goods and services. The city budget is an agreement we make with one another and for one another.

I have no expertise in finance (and have never stayed at a Holiday Inn), but there’s a disconnect between revenue and expenditure. I doubt anyone is unimpressed by the quality and expertise with which the city and its departments deliver goods and services. Where we need to become concerned is the lack of growth spurt in the Grand List NOT tied to residential reevaluation but to genuine commercial economic development. Simply put, we have nowhere near enough; being busy is NOT being productive in fostering commercial economic development.

Telling the City Council ‘to cut the budget’ may be therapeutic but it is not especially helpful. Cut where? And how? The myth of ‘fat’ in the budget is just that, a fairy story. Budgets in recent decades have been exercises in new recipes for making stone soup as there is no meat or bone left. There’s only so much ‘do more with less’ our city can manage before we accept we can’t do anything anymore as we are.

Economizing alone will not reduce taxes. What we need is more meaningful commercial economic growth that expands the Grand List throughout the city. The quality of our community is built on the quality of the decisions we must now make, starting now
.-bill kenny