Budget Whoas!

From yet another "long time listener, first time caller". Gee...anyone get the idea that a lot of people were less than pleased with information received from the recent budget hearing as well as how the meeting itself was (mis)handled?
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I regrettably was unable to attend the budget meeting on May 20, 2010, but I did attend the voting meeting last October. I have just now gotten the opportunity to review the presentation by Dr. Culver, Phil Frei, and Jim McCourt. Perhaps I missed something in the translation by skipping the song and dance and just reading the script, but it did allow me to focus on those things that they felt were important enough to write down. A few quotes caught my eye:

...Is $900,000 under the state-imposed revenue cap!!

Excellent data point, and the only bullet in the entire presentation to be awarded the coveted second exclamation point. This is obviously the point that they are going to emphasize. This will make up what in advertising parlance is known as the theme, in auto sales parlance as the sticker price, and in other sales circles as the elemental tactic of “showing high”.

This is the benchmark from which all discussions should be started. Don’t ask us what the car costs or is worth, ask us what number has been hung on it and we can work our way down from there. That number has been set by the manufacturer, in a manner that may be more or less arbitrary than the levy cap set by the state. That is not the way to approach a budget. The public is not terribly interested in what you don’t intend to do, but rather what you do intend to do.

Let me suggest a more honest way of approaching this issue. Instead of celebrating the money you are NOT asking to spend, work your way up from the bottom by justifying the money you ARE asking to spend. I personally don’t care what the state revenue cap is unless it becomes a referendum issue. I am not favorably impressed by the man who steals my wallet, spends the money on hookers and lottery tickets, and then comes back to me bragging that he did NOT steal my watch too. Let the man ask for help to get a meal and an education, show me that the money is going for that, and I will gladly help him.

Current budget contains a 7.8% increase; mostly due to the “rebound” effect of last year’s Annual Meeting vote.

Laughable. This is like a child saying that there is no change from the twenty because the “rebound” effect of seeing a movie is popcorn and a drink.

The current budget contains a 7.8% increase because that is the amount of money the administration is proposing to spend this year. They might be proposing to spend it this year because they were not allowed to spend it last year, but this isn’t a rebound anything. Since they seem to understand basketball analogies, let me give them one that really describes the situation.

After time ran out we did not have the points we wanted, so we are going to try to come out in the second game and score enough points to make up the difference. Our only other option is to play defense (reduce spending) so that we do not have to score as many total points, but we want to be the Michael Redd[1] of school districts and score, score, score!!! My analogy fails. So does theirs.

If the tax levy had not been lowered by the $2M last year, this year’s increase would be 1.6%.

This is the administration’s way of saying “if you had given us more money, we would have spent the same or a lesser amount of money”. Anyone who believes that can take a look at the discussion of what to do with the “leftover” referendum money. They are like a pig on full feed—the only way to stop them is to load them on the truck. That’s what happened last October.

The message from the voter’s meeting was that those present thought that the school district spends too much money. This message was either not received or not believed. Had it been, the board and administration would have been making a greater effort to spend wisely and in a way that the public can understand and agree with.

The message that the board and administration DID receive was that they need different voters and had better work to that end. They may be right, and they may get enough free spenders to carry the day next October. If they are wrong, however, they are doubling down on a losing hand by not taking the concerns of ALL members of the community seriously. They will have hurt their credibility to the point where citizens who want to do the right thing will not trust them to carry it out. And those citizens will quit buying feed.

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[1] G: MICHAEL REDD, Milwaukee Bucks.
-Possibly pound-for-pound, minute-for-minute the worst defensive player in the NBA on sheer talent and effort. For instance, last year he had a mere 13 blocked shots and 65 steals in 2,702 minutes