Signs, signs, everywhere a sign.

I attended the second Tough Choices Budget Forum and was struck by two signs I read. The first one was attached to what is called the “wailing wall” among other comments and pleas made by participants. It read: “parks are for kids, parks are for adults, parks are FREE. Save our parks.” I get that what the writer was going for is that we don’t have to pay to enjoy our parks each time we use them, but the truth is that parks — and all other city services — are not free, they cost us more than $2 billion in locally generated taxes each year. We take lots and lots of money from families and firms to pay for the services we enjoy (or don’t enjoy so much). In this fiscal crisis, the whole point is that parks (and everything else) cost money and with tax revenues going down and pension costs going up, we need to find a way to pay for the services we demand.

That brings me to the second sign, which recounted a participant’s plea for more information. While the Budget Forum is an admirable effort to allow public participation in the budget process, it does not give nearly enough information to participants so that we can truly make tough choices. What we would know as the city budget is a General Fund that accounts for $4 billion in spending with an infinite number of ways to cut costs or alter spending, yet the Budget Forum offered a few pages of articulated scenarios from which citizens could “choose their poison.” If participants suggested we reduce the amount of no-bid contracts, eliminate funding for outside legal counsel, or manage overtime costs better, they were told that those ideas just weren’t among the options.

That’s too bad and it is one of the reasons that, as City Controller, I will post every single expenditure of city money I approve online and work to create online tools to allow citizens to search through those expenditures so that they can truly understand where our money goes. Armed with more information, we can see that parks, and other services, are costly. But, we could see a lot of other costly items in the budget and we might be prepared to cut some of that inefficient and wasteful spending to preserve the services that matter to us.