Bend City Councilors have all but put the final touches on next year’s budget, but you can still take a stab at putting your own fiscal blueprint together with an online calculator developed by the city that lets average citizens call the shots.
The online tool is similar to one develop by an advocacy group earlier this year that looked at Oregon’s state budget. That tool was intended to show how cuts would impact services and helped users get a sense of the challenge faced by legislators who are wrestling with a $3 billion shortfall.
While the Bend budget tool allows users to shuffle numbers around, it’s not quite as dramatic as the original tool. For instance, the state budget balancer tended to show how cuts would impact particular populations, such as the elderly, mentally disabled, or children. Whereas the Bend budget tool allows you to shuffle dollars around that impact less gut-wrenching services like snow plowing and transportation planning.
While the Bend Budget Tool, gives a sense of the choices and the prioritization process, there’s also no clear-cut goal that I could discern. It would be helpful if the city were a little more clear about the exact budget shortfall and then let users start cutting programs and raising fees to see if the gap can be closed.
If all this budget discussion strikes a chord, you can see firsthand how councilors come down on the issues later this month at their final budget adoption meeting, June 27.
This article appears in Jun 2-8, 2011.
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I followed the link and even though the budget calculator offers ways to reduce the budget in most categories it does not allow a reduction for police or fire departments and states that the city needs to increase them. Those two categories are 82% of the general fund budget. Obviously its impossible to balance a budget when 82% of it is off limits. Meanwhile I see brand new fire department buildings and equipment and brand new police vehicles rolling up and down the road pulling people over for using their cell phones and driving without a seat belt. How about we focus on real crime and pull back on these expenditures. Also cut back on government employee benefits and bring them in line with the private sector. That will save $1.3 Million as well.