Keeping Balanced

Looking at the calendar the other day, I have been doing this job for nearly 30 years.Over that time, I have come across many a politician, some career, some trying out serving the public good for the first time. And, unfortunately, over the years, I have come across some politicians that have said they can balance a budget. Well, I get it, everyone can do math, but it really irked me when I would get someone running for office come into the newsroom for an interview and claim they could cut taxes and maintain services.There is one universal fact: math is math. You can check with a mathematician, an accountant, a kindergarten teacher, the result is the same, two minus one is one. One minus one is zero. You can’t have rising costs in a budget, cut taxes and maintain the same services in a particular area.If a police force runs a city $100,000 a year, let’s say, and it is paid for via taxes, and a politician said they can give taxpayers a rebate or money back and can maintain these same services, they are lying.If you want property tax relief, then prepare for some inefficiencies in your daily life. Salaries are the highest part of a budget. So to provide tax relief, someone has to go. It could be minor, but you will have to give up something as a citizen for that relief, possibly one less person in the clerk’s office at your local courthouse, which means processing a form you need takes longer, or something you sent in doesn’t get registered in time. Roads may look rougher. Not as many deputies patrolling the streets. Delays in service. These things are the trade off for financial relief.Yes, you can go through a budget with a fine-toothed comb to find a few extra pennies here and there, but having been involved in business and city, county and school government all this time, salaries are the only thing that makes a difference.You can cut back on paperclips in all offices and save $25 a year but getting rid of the secretary position can save $25,000. There is also the point of getting that fine-toothed comb to scratch out money in a budget becomes counter-productive.My mentor and former publisher and editor of this publication, Fred Arnold, once had to deal with a cash box that was nine cents under. The book keeper spent over an hour trying to find what happened to that nine cents. He eventually said, “I just paid an hour of your salary over nine cents,” and handed them a dime. “You’ve wasted more than that looking for nine cents.” Politicians that say they can squeeze money out of a budget aren’t usually looking at the big picture, but rather the thumbnails.Salaries=savings=sacrifice. You can ask fewer people to do more, but when they burn out what will happen to services then? Are there bloated budgets and things that can be cut? Yes, absolutely, but outside of salaries it equals pennies in the overall scheme. Does every assistant need an assistant? No, but to be efficient, you need the right amount of people doing what is needed, which may mean more in one office than another.

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