Budget Time

It's budget time in Middletown. I'm still learning, but I've been in the job long enough to see that the system is broken. We are one month into the year, and we are just starting to discuss how to cut the budget and manage our resources. At a minimum, this process should have taken place last summer. In August 2008, I offered a motion to create a Finance Committee that would engage the Department Heads in early budget discussions, review our operations and make specific recommendations on what aspects of our business might be cut. Patrick Short supported me, but everyone else voted it down. Opposition to this Finance Committee (a committee which exists in almost every municipality and any large organization) is hard to understand. It's baffling. Rather than allowing a small group to meet regularly with Department Heads and start taking a knife to some of our operations, the five Township Committee members are left to review the entire budget, meet separately with Department Heads, and make recommendations for the budget. No coordination, no tossing ideas around, just five people running in five different directions. Confronted with the greatest financial crisis of our generation, with the 2009 budget it's business as usual.

This process is especially ill-suited for a public entity. Even if the Township Committee decided to hold a number of meetings to get together and wade through the budget and discuss changes to our spending patterns, we have to have a full-blown public meeting, which is hardly conducive to getting alot done in a short space of time. I simply thought it would be better to delegate this work to a Finance Committee that could dig into the Township's finances and come back to the full Committee with specific recommendations before we started spending the money we are trying to save.

Since this type of proactive, planned approach to budget cuts has been voted down by everyone but Mr. Short, I see no other option but to either freeze spending at last year's levels (with the exception of agreed upon employee contracts) or even cut our spending to 5% to 10% below last year's levels. While I would prefer to impose cuts by focusing on our business and the services we deliver and studying what needs to be done and how services could be delivered more efficiently, it is too late to take this approach. By imposing an across the board spending freeze or cut, the onus for choosing how to reduce spending would be placed on the department heads, who are the people with the best understanding of what can be cut and what cannot. Yes, this might mean the loss of some programs. There might be fewer concerts in the park in the summer. It might take a little longer to get information from one of the Township's Departments. We might skip Middletown Day for a year. We might even have to organize some of our recreational supporters and participants to help with the maintenance of some of our fields (but my guess is that these folks are willing to help to cut costs). But these are extraordinary times requiring severe measures. We must provide safety and emergency response, followed by sound roads and public works. Much of what remains is discretionary and should be prioritized. As for union contracts that come due this year, given the state of the economy, we need a freeze on wages. Anything else would ignore the economic reality facing us. There is money to be saved, but it won't happen magically. Since we have already started spending 2009 budget dollars, we must move swiftly to implement the spending limitations discussed above.