It seems like it doesn't happen very often, but Mayor Seng and I agree on at least a few things: portions of the City Council's
proposed budget modifications stink. By dipping into carryover funds, for example, the Council's short-sightedness will decrease departments' long-term incentives to be fiscally responsible. Axing the city traffic engineer's position takes away an important individual responsible for dealing with one of Lincoln's perennial source of complaints. And taking the Aquila payout in one year rather than two is impatient and unnecessary.
The Council's approach to budgeting feels almost amateurish. They went in with a specific number in mind (which is reasonable enough) and were willing to think as short-term as necessary to get there (which is not). I'm all for fiscal responsibility, small government, and so on. But stealing from the piggy bank is not an exercise in fiscal responsibility; it's an exercise in immaturity.
Likewise, the decision to take away the traffic engineer position has a distinct odor of playground politics. Why, out of all the jobs in city government, that position? Why a position responsible for the source of one of Lincolnites' most common complaints? Are we to believe that one or more Council members' past run-ins with the current holder of that position have nothing to do with this decision?
In all fairness the Council is in a difficult spot. It has to make cuts -- relatively substantial cuts -- to Mayor Seng's budget or it is accused of playing fast and loose with the taxpayer dime. But there isn't a lot of easily-accessible fat to trim. Sure, there are lots of potential cuts out there, but most are either small (requiring more work) or likely to stir up noisy constituents. Who is going to get too fussy about a boring ol' traffic engineer? How many Lincolnites will picket over spending all of Aquila's money this year, rather than over two years?
On the upside, the Council wants to save taxpayers $2.8 million. That's worth noting. On the down side, a portion of what we save this year will come back to haunt us in the future. Most of the Council's proposed savings are not free.