[img]1792|right|Mr. Clarke||no_popup[/img]Representing 11 percent of the audience at last evening’s opening round of the City Council budget hearings, Goran Eriksson, Chair of the new Financial Advisory Committee, observed proceedings more closely than usual because he soon will be commenting on them.
Besides being impressed by Fire Chief Chris Sellers’s organizational skills, making do with a modest staffing level, Mr. Eriksson hunched forward when Councilman Jim Clarke started popping a series of probing questions at department managers.
“What Clarke did was enlightening,” Mr. Eriksson said.
He also noted the disappointing lack of printed material available for audience members to provide an understanding of budgetary context. And that was exactly where Councilman Clarke stepped in.
“It’s very hard for us, when we are considering a budget, to just look at numbers,” Mr. Clarke said.
Where is the context of the bare data?
“When I see an expenditure on a page, I don’t have a clear sense of its meaning. Say, a $5,000 expense for office supplies.
“I have no idea whether that is an appropriate amount, or what it is being spent for.
“The only thing I can look at is, ‘How much did we spend in previous years? How much are you recommending?’
“If there is a large variance, we might ask questions. But I still won’t know whether the amount is appropriate or how the funds are being used.”
Probing in several directions to quench his curiosity, Mr. Clarke found a new area of exploration.
“It seems to me that the value where we weigh in as a Council is in looking at the work plans,” he said.
“This is what you said you were going to do, and this is what you have done.
“I went back not only to last year but the year before. In some cases, I saw the same amounts of money. That raises the question of what is going on here?
“In other cases, it is the way it is worded. Ongoing activities were to have been completed by a certain date but were not. What is going on?
“The Fire Dept., for example, listed 23 items in their work plan last year. Only five had been completed. Is staffing the problem? Or is it something else?”
Mr. Clarke’s investigation reached a familiar conclusion, one faced by hundreds of municipal governments during the last half-dozen years of recessionary times:
“We are trying to do more with less,” he said, “trying to maintain services with less money available, trying to make 20 gallons of water fit into a 10 gallon hat.”
