When the City Council opens its annual pre-season budget hearings week after next, they could meet in Jim Clarke’s car.
Not much more room will be needed to accommodate the several – or fewer – members of the public invested in fairly closely studying the apparently intolerably dry trajectory of City Hall revenue.
If you want to clear a room, announce budget hearings.
“I don’t know why people don’t come out,” Councilman Clarke said. “I wish I knew an answer. If I did, I would figure out a way to bring them in.”
Is the agenda too amorphous for workaday types?
Not for Mr. Clarke and his almost nonstop work ethic.
“Budget hearings are better than just looking at line items in a budget with numbers on them,” he said.
“We spend our time reviewing the work plans, and that gives you a sense of what the priorities are for how we are going to be spending the taxpayers’ money.”
As a devout wonk, Mr. Clarke cannot understand why such talk isn’t a magnet for people who claim to be interested in city affairs.
“There is an opportunity for the public to say ‘Gee, it’s great you are doing that’ or ‘I don’t think that is such a hot idea, and you ought to focus on something else.’
“There is an opportunity there being missed.”
(To be continued)
