It’s very easy this time of year to think of budgets as just a series of numbers: the numbers a town is required to pay due to contracts, the numbers department heads want, the recommended numbers from a select board or budget committee.
Those numbers get haggled over, added to and subtracted from to develop a final number – the budget presented to voters, who make their own decisions based on the number that is how much they’re willing to spend in property taxes.
But aside from the costs the town has to pay because of contractual obligations, all of those numbers represent decisions and priorities that have impact, that mean things. Adding to a police department budget could mean a new officer, increased pay for existing officers so they’re more likely to stay or a promotion for someone deserving. Agreeing to more spending on the library now could mean new programs for children later this year, or lessening staff workload by filling an assistant librarian’s position that had been vacant.
Conversely, cutting a budget, or rejecting some or all of a requested increase, has its own meaning. If schools have less to spend than they say they need, does that mean fewer teachers, less staff or putting off that equipment purchase for a year? If the numbers in the DPW budget don’t work out as hoped, perhaps they have to figure out how to get by plowing the roads less during the winter or not doing as much road maintenance once the weather improves.
So budget decisions aren’t just a matter of pushing and pulling, adding and subtracting and trying to make numbers work; they’re determining priorities. What are the things that matter enough for town officials to ask residents to put money behind them with their taxes? And what are voters willing to put their tax dollars behind? Numbers that may seem perfectly reasonable during the preparation process – or at least the best compromise possible – could fall flat with voters, either because they have different priorities, because one particular item is a bridge too far or because the whole thing is just going to take too much out of their wallets.
And when that happens, everyone has to go back to the drawing board, with smaller numbers and harder decisions.
So those budget discussions going on across the region aren’t just about numbers; they’re about what towns will look like going forward.