Cut It Out

originally published May 7, 2008

Better police protection, improved bus service, more vigilant probation officers, reduction of waste taken to the landfill and a little something for the homeless—all this and more for an additional $25 a year? Sounds to me like the best deal since I called that special TV number at 3 a.m. and bought my wok.

What’s the big deal? We’ve got our first actual tax increase in 15 years, and it’s aimed at services to protect us and improve our transportation infrastructure plus covering the exorbitant rise in gasoline costs and paying our county employees cost-of-living increases. What’s wrong with that?

People who are raising hell over the tax increase are not saying, of course, that we don’t need better bus service or better equipment for cops. What they’re saying is that instead of raising taxes, even by the $25 calculated tax increase on a $150,000 house, that we should first make cuts equal to the increases.

Of course, the big next question is cut what? Now, I know that the Great Communicator, Win Abbe (it’s possible you’re not on his list), will say, or probably already has, just scrap the whole bus system. Government shouldn’t be providing that service; it’s something for the private sector. Seriously, though, what and where would you cut? Sure: the red-light cameras, except that, as you might expect, those split-second snoops pay for themselves, or rather, arrange for you to pay for themselves.

If you will read through the budget—right after you finish “Best Moments of American Idol”—one thing you’ll see is how many requests for funding new programs or personnel were not included in the new budget. In fact, the extra bus service for the Atlanta Highway and the Barnett Shoals corridor, like the money for the homeless, were obvious attempts by the city to make at least a small contribution toward funding something recommended by OneAthens to fight poverty. The police department, for instance, requested 10 patrol officers to increase downtown and neighborhood protection. The department also asked for four detectives to work violent crimes and unsolved cold cases, as well as four communications officers to respond to increased volume of emergency and non-emergency calls. None of those requests were funded, though the cops got a little money for computers and communications. We should be raising hell with the Mayor and Commission for not raising our taxes more in order to provide a greater level of public safety.

There’s also some new money in the budget to pay for housing prisoners outside Athens-Clarke County, given the fact that we’ve got more prisoners than our jail will hold. So, maybe if we cut back on that money for the police department, we won’t have as many prisoners and then, too, we won’t need the new probation officers funded by the budget increase. For that matter, if we quit busting people for smoking crack and selling it, we’d have room in the jail to take in prisoners from other counties and reverse that cash flow.

So, all you budget cutters, what would you cut? You live in an apartment, why not cut leaf and limb pickup? Why should all those homeowners expect the government to come pick it up every time they cut down a crape myrtle?

You don’t have kids: let’s cut leisure services or the nature center. Who cares about bugs? Kids can learn enough about bugs at home, and they can play ball in the street.

Here’s a big one. Firemen spend 98 percent of their time not fighting fires. Why should we pay so many firemen to sit around or train for fires they’re not fighting? Some judicious cuts in that department would save a boatload of money by paying fewer firemen to sit around less. Chances are we wouldn’t even notice the difference in fire protection.

Well, sorry, didn’t mean to get ridiculous. But the point is that the Mayor and Commission and their staff spent a lot of months and a lot of time assessing budget requests and attempting to do everything we need with a balanced budget. And remember, also, that they recently tried cutting a couple of agencies they thought weren’t producing enough and all hell broke loose.

So, go to it. They haven’t voted yet, and there are three public hearings on the budget coming up soon. (See City Dope.) What would you cut?

Pete McCommons

editor@flagpole.com