Understanding the Budget
To be truly critical of something you have two options. First, you can fully understand it and believe there is a better alternative. Second, you can not fully understand it and believe that the burden is elsewhere to convince you.
It’s my opinion that in regards to budgets our community rightfully rests in the second camp. The budgets are too big and complex for anyone to know completely. Options to review and suggest alternatives are disingenuous. Recent history includes reasons to be suspicious but lacks reasons to give trust–time and actions will hopefully reverse this.
I believe myself to be fairly educated in our local government, but I’ll be the first to say that I do not fully comprehend the budget.
I think the Interim County Manager did a decent job in putting the budget in terms that were easily understandable. It wasn’t perfect, but that’s not entirely his fault–it’s the nature of the beast (e.g. politics).
What I think would be beneficial is more of the complete breakdown of the budget into simple to understand terms. The Triangle Transportation Authority in Raleigh worked with the public to determine its budget some years ago. It had a certain amount of new funding and had to decide what to do with the funds. So it posted a simple webpage that let everyone vote. Everyone got to ‘spend’ their 14 ‘pennies’ however they wanted. Each item had its approximate cost (e.g. bike racks were 2 pennies, extra routes were 6 pennies, etc).
Telling the public that the budget is bare-bones is not sufficient. Telling the public that these are the best next cuts is not sufficient. The public is requesting to be shown. And at the same time, pointing to a 400-page budget won’t cut it.
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