May 22, 2008
From the Crow’s Nest: It's time to pay the piper
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Newspaper headlines in communities scattered around the region have been proclaiming, almost apologetically it seems, that “Schools struggle to cope with budget cuts.”
It’s enough to drive the education industry to distraction and the doom and gloom is almost palpable. Like Chicken Little’s sky, the learning process will collapse and the quality of education will suffer incalculable harm, they prophesy.
Teachers’ unions and parent-school organizations were once referred to as “the lollipop brigade” in some quarters because they marched so resolutely to town meetings and referendums, protesting that the future of our children and thus our very nation was being jeopardized for the want of a few more taxpayer dollars.
Invariably, however, the stories under those scary headlines reveal the real truth. The simple fact is that school budgets are almost never cut. As a rule, all the trimming is done in the amounts by which boards of education seek to increase their spending. Thus, for example, education lobbyists are startled when a school budget that has been increased by five percent on top of last year’s five percent on top of the previous year’s five percent, etc., is raised this year by only three percent instead of the five percent requested and duly expected.
They are best advised to get used to it. School spending, always unstintingly and quite properly generous, drives a municipal budget and tax rate. Largely because of it, other departments in municipal operations generally have had to do with less funding than they would have liked as finance boards, in deference to the beleaguered taxpayer, try to get a grip on expenditures.
Maybe those departments “struggled” a bit and maybe it wasn’t really so tough after all. At any rate, they managed and still survive in pretty good shape. Indeed, they continue to serve our towns and cities exceedingly well. There’s a lesson in there for school systems.
Perhaps, too, the daunting headlines about schools struggling ought to be read in tandem with some of the other newspaper notices. How about mortgage foreclosures and working people losing the jobs that once put the bread and butter on the family’s dining room table? How about horrendous prices on gasoline and electricity? Nor should we overlook how the diversion of crops into biofuels has impacted the household food budget. And how about state budgets awash in red ink and unable to return more dollars to the towns and cities where people need a break from the precipitous climb in property taxes?
In short, it’s time to face up to reality. Spending sprees at the expense of the taxpaying property-owner have to be reined in. Municipal budgets everywhere are deep in debt from past largesse. Paying it off requires huge chunks of the money appropriated each year. Yes, debt amortization is expensive and interest charges drain off funds needed for current operations rather than used for past profligacy. Yet, there’s a constant barrage of requests for more bond issues to finance new projects.
In town after town, taxpayers are saying they’ve had enough. They are having to tighten their own belts in challenging economic times and are demanding that their local governments do the same. Results in recent referenda offer ample evidence of their disgruntlement. They’re sending budget and bond issue proposals back to their town boards for re-examination.
Nor does the demand for a little more economic rigor need be ruinous. Municipal budgets totaling millions of dollars almost necessarily have room for some fluff, perhaps in overly generous contracts and pension arrangements with employee unions. The challenge that remains now for responsive boards of finance to root out that fluff and determine which of it can be eliminated or at least pared without any harm to the realities of practical budgets.
History shows that local taxpayers have been supportive and generous without too much undue complaint. They have earned a bit of realism from budgeting officials, some recognition of the economic difficulties being experienced by everybody, though perhaps to varying degrees. The budget disappointments being experienced by school systems now are perhaps the price they must pay for the lavish backing they always have enjoyed in the past.
© Copyright 2008 by Hersam Acorn Newspapers
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