When Dollars Speak: What Does Goshen’s Budget Say About Us?

Admittedly, we’re not the World Series — or a Serbian Folk Dance Troupe — but we DID have a pretty interesting discussion Tuesday night in City Council chambers, thanks largely to councilman Adam Scharf who got the ball rolling with some proposed cuts to the Mayor’s 2017 budget. For more on that, see today’s (10/27/2016) Goshen News editorial that rightly credits Scharf for starting an important — and difficult — public conversation.

Mayor Stutsman, of course, did some hard work behind the scenes with City department heads to shrink our overall budget from 2016’s $40,768,175 to 2017’s $37,673,355.

This was my first year participating in the budget process as a council member. Not surprisingly, it feels a little different from inside “the box” as I affectionately call our council seating area.

We heard testimony from representatives of the Economic Development Corporation, Chamber of Commerce, Downtown Goshen, Inc., and the Community Relations Commission — all organizations that were on a list of potential council-initiated reductions.

As an official steward of our community tax dollars, I found the input from these groups helpful. They all made their cases, describing their work and the value it adds to our community.

Here is the part that doesn’t set well in my bones (and, oddly, this was left out of the Goshen News editorial): The final result of our budgeting process was that the ONLY cut to the Mayor’s proposed $37 million budget was to the Community Relations Commission — which, by the way, is also the ONLY commission that doesn’t have ongoing city staff support. I voted against the cut (along with Councilwoman Gautsche and Councilman Ahlersmeyer).

It’s worth mentioning that several of those who voted for the cut to the CRC stated their support of the group as they cast their votes to cut it. I’m not quite sure what to do with that contradiction, so I’ll let it speak for itself.

I’m left with a question for us all: What message does it send to Goshen residents that in the current national political climate, the only additional cut that could get a majority council vote was a cut to the commission charged with fighting discrimination and building relationships across our differences?

If you have an answer, I’d love to hear it.

Additional thoughts from my first go-round of municipal budget hearings:

1. Budgeting for 30,000 people is not for wimps (pages and pages of numbers interspersed with legalese means lots of quality time with my new Middle-age Lady Reading Glasses)
2. City Council is generally less involved in the process than I imagined.
3. Many people don’t care at all about the budget (If we had grassroots, participatory budget planning workshops, would anybody come? Seriously, it’s YOUR money. We can spend it without you, but a little more guidance from you would be fun, too.).
4. A handful of people care a LOT about the budget.