I don’t know Carol Sharick, but I wish I did. I really liked her commentary in the Amherst Bulletin (October 5) urging those of us who want some economic development and diversity in our tax base to show up and make our voices heard. Like her, I am “a person who likes living in Amherst,” and “understands that we have a crippling revenue shortage.” It’s time to speak up on these subjects.
We also need to speak up about more immediate issues, like the reality that there will be more budget cuts in the next fiscal year, and that this town needs leadership to identify the issues and make proposals. Instead, we have fiddling around with small, more manageable, topics.
The Select Board has put together a “survey” which they mailed to Town Meeting members about their priorities. One Town Meeting member told me she can’t decide whether to just throw it out or try to find a way to respond meaningfully. Why the negative reaction? Because the survey is ridiculously general: it lists topics by the broad categories used in the budget and asks people to rate them for increases, decreases, elimination, staying the same ... etc. For example, under “General Government,” the survey says: “This section of government includes the Select Board/Town Manager expenses, Town Meeting/Finance Committee, Finance Department, Legal Services, Human Resources/Human Rights, Information Technology, Town Clerk’s Office, Elections and Registration, Facilities Maintenance and general services, all employee benefits.” There is a small space for comments. In Education, there are two sections: Elementary and Regional Schools.
I empathize with my frustrated representative. There is no information about what the budgets are, how much they have been increased (or, more likely, decreased) in real dollars during the past decade or two, whether the populations being served have grown or shrunk, whether any services under any category are mandatory under federal or state law, the current status of contracts, etc.
The fact that we are facing a continuing financial melt-down cannot possibly be a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. This situation was projected by many competent people, including the former and current Finance Directors, years ago. The coming financial difficulties and how best to organize ourselves to deal with them was also a major topic during the debates earlier this decade about whether to pass a charter that would change Amherst’s form of government. We chose not to make that change, so we face planning ahead with a very diffuse form of government. We have a Select Board that does not have to deal with the budget, if it doesn’t want to, until right before Town Meeting gets it. We have a School Committee and Library Trustees who can, if they choose to, blame the difficult decisions they have to make on someone else – the Finance Committee, or the Finance Director or the Town Manager.
The basic situation is not the “fault” of current office holders ( unless they have been in office for some time). But declining to deal with it is not acceptable. From the vantage point of a citizen who reads the papers, it seems our elected officials are not keeping their eyes on the ball. A few weeks ago, a swimmer wrote to the Bulletin pointing out that during the summer there had been a lot of talk and activity to keep both outdoor pools open, despite tight budgets, but no one seemed to have been planning ahead to the issue of keeping the Middle School open for swimming the other two thirds of the year. Good point.
That short-sightedness overall is causing us to stumble around, with lots of ill feeling but no plan. During last year’s attempt at passing an override, the Finance Committee had a plan for several years; voters didn’t accept it.
We citizens should be insisting that our elected officials – all of them – make considering the budget – for several years at a time -- their top priority. Almost twenty years ago, a member of the Select Board, Rick Rice, used to say, whenever we had a difficult decision to make, “that’s why we get the high salaries and the corner office.” Of course there were not then, and are not now, either high salaries or corner offices. There were and are important responsibilities that some people have chosen to take on. The most important part of running our town involves the way we spend our money. I look forward to clear courageous leadership by the people elected to office. If we can’t get it from current incumbents, we should find and suppport responsible people willing to run for office to do the job.