Published: September 12, 2009 10:46 pm      

Focus first on necessities

Many of us know the feeling: Expenses continue to climb while income remains the same or — even worse — decreases. The situation forces a major revision in budgets.

Governmental bodies, such as the city of Danville, are no different.

The cost of providing services — such as police and fire protection, building code enforcement, street maintenance and sewage treatment — continue to climb. Workers want pay raises, the cost of materials climbs and other factors push costs higher.

At the same time, government receives its money from taxes and fees. As people feel the money crunch, they evaluate what’s necessary and pare back on the extras.

Maybe it means fewer shopping trips — the city sees a decrease in revenue from gasoline taxes. Maybe it means buying less — the city sees a decrease in revenue from sales taxes. Maybe it means delaying maintenance on a house or putting off a remodeling project — the city sees a decrease in property taxes.

Mayor Scott Eisenhauer enlisted the help of a group of city residents with financial backgrounds to help sift through the city’s budget. They met last week, discussing such ideas as shifting some of the costs of benefits onto city employees, increasing various fees, reducing support for Harrison Park and other recreational sites, hiking the city’s share of the sales tax by 1 percent — and even filing bankruptcy to wipe out part of the city’s obligations.

At the same time, city officials continue to figure out a way to continue the yard waste program, which provides residents with weekly pick-ups for much of the year. The program runs more than $200,000 in the red every year.

A measure to reduce the scope of the yard waste program brought several protests — an estimated 30 percent of the city’s residents use the service weekly. And who can blame them? It’s a convenience that costs them less than $1 a week.

It seems difficult to justify cuts in other services or fee hikes while maintaining a program that loses more than $200,000 a year.

Hauling away people’s leaves is a nice service, but few other communities provide it via city employees. Many communities leave the job to residents.

When money becomes as tight as it these days for governmental bodies, the focus must be on the necessary. That might prompt a few protests from the minority of residents who use a particular program, but it makes more fiscal sense in the long run.