Why the Town Budget Can Be Beautiful
Hear me out, okay?
Sometimes, you just need to sit on the floor in a third-floor conference room in a Municipal Building and watch five people put democracy in action by crunching line item after line item in section after section of a town’s public safety budget.
Sounds riveting, right?
It’s not.
But it is actually kind of beautiful. I’m not talking the kind of beautiful that exists in a hangover breakfast or in a Bar Harbor sunrise. No, I’m talking about people with diverse opinions hunched over numbers, pens in hands, giant binders in front of them.
Their job was to make recommendations to a Warrant Committee that would make recommendations to a Town Council that would make a draft budget, hold a public hearing and eventually voters would approve or tweak or even radically change that budget in June.
That sounds like a process. It is.
That sounds messy. It can be.
Already, people are on social media decrying or supporting one choice or another. Should the library’s funding jump to $330,000 or not? Is there anywhere to cut, they ask? And they respond: yes or no; no or hell yes. And there are people pleading to make a 20% tax increase a fiction, for the property bill of the median home owner to not jump an additional $800-$900.
There were five Warrant subcommittees in our town, each in charge of a different section of the overall budget. Most didn’t tweak the budget at all. Most met once in two hours or less. But one committee, that public safety committee, met three times, and found potential changes that would both help fund the interest on a $55-million school bond and almost a million off the tax rolls.
They met in that little conference room three times. The last meeting lasted four hours. Will people be mad at them? Possibly. Did they all agree on everything. Absolutely not. Do I personally agree with every line item tweak? Hell no. Is that how a representative democracy supposed to work? Hell yeah.
And that’s beautiful.
I can’t speak for all voters in Bar Harbor and I would never want to. I like that people care and are passionate and have different opinions. I definitely can’t speak for all journalists and bloggers in Bar Harbor. But damn if I’m not impressed that these people are willing to put in the time and the work and the thought and the patience and the passion to try to make a difference.