Proving Where The Money Goes

Most of the people in your community would love to know “where the money goes”.  This is the function of budgets but it is sometimes hard to find out just what is being bought.

On this blog I have placed links to various governments and quasi governments and with the exception of the Town Of Friday Harbor it is impossible to tell what the money is actually being spent on.

Some counties, like Multnomah or San Juan, do not include the narrative with the budget.  Others have the narrative but under a separate cover so making a connection to income and expenses is impossible.  Portland City Schools is a real good case in point as it takers a request based on a federal law to get both the budget and the narrative.

It is incumbent for elected persons to construct the government budget, Federal, State, County, and city in such a way as to prove where the money goes.  Other types of budgets are liked by some in civil service because it allows money to be shifted Willie Nellie from department to department without notice.

Come to think of it, some elected people resist the kind of budget where the narrative goes with the numbers fro the same reason.  This is why they are Down the Sewer Pipe – Politically speaking.

Sherman

Why conservation is a bad idea

Going green is the thing to do these days and there are a Varity of reasons for doing so.  There is a cost that no one is addressing and as policies are made there are the forgotten things.

The cost of most of the services on a municipally are, in point of fact, driven by scale.  It takes a lot of money to make drinking water safe for a few but the cost for making drinking water safe for a lot of people is relativity small.  One of the ways to insure that people of lower incomes do not come to your community is to embark on “forced” conservation.

As resources are conserved they are used less and the less they are used the more that they cost.  By using ordnances to “force” people to conserve they use less and it costs more to provide the service.

Conservation, then, can be used to limit the population based on income.  People why cannot afford the service will not be able to live in your community.  From a standpoint of the United States Constitution this is a bad thing.  Addressed in the laws regarding rent and access an end run by a community, like Scottsdale Arizona or Portland Oregon, around the Constitution is being made by the very people elected to office who took an oath to protect the population from such ideas.

What conservation actually does is to make water, sewer, solid waste removal, more expensive.  The added expense is acquired because the less water is used the more it costs to make it pure.  The less the sewer is used the more it cost to maintain, the less solid waste is collected the more it costs to collect it.

Conservation is being used to insure communities that they do not have to rub shoulders with “Those kind of People”.  When talking about conservation in your community make sure it is based on the lack of resources as it relates the he community as a while.

Sherman