Posted on 12/14/2002 12:06:40 PM PST by sarcasm
ORVALLIS, Ore., Dec 9 — Seventh-grade members of Westland Middle School's ad hoc budget committee were deliberating proposals for another round of cuts to present to the school board. The board shut 3 of the city's 15 schools this year. It has cut kindergarten to half a day, eliminated all middle school sports but track and stopped the "drown proof" swimming program to help children survive a fall into the Willamette River.
"In kindergarten, you would bring a box of Kleenex for everyone to use," Aaron Gable said.
"If kids brought in other supplies —— " Alex Hoffman began.
"The entire class could use them," Ariel Vance-Borland said. "I think we could have the cleaners not pick up trash."
"Or do the vacuuming," Andrea Kozak said.
"We could do that ourselves," Ariel said.
"We really don't want to lose electives," Andrea said.
"If we want to be an artist, we can take an art class," Ariel said.
"Electives are the most important part of school," Aaron said.
As these 12- and 13-year-olds have learned, these are days of difficult choices in Corvallis, a tidy, comfortably well-off town of 52,000 about 90 miles south of Portland. What they may not know is how much Corvallis is like everywhere else in the country.
In this slow economy, with unemployment up to 6 percent and the big capital gains of the flush 1990's evaporating, tax collections have plunged, forcing most states to grapple with the biggest budget deficits since World War II, according to the National Governors Association.
The effects of the national slump have tumbled to the biggest cities and smallest towns and places between, like Corvallis, where the abstractions of daunting budget numbers have become personal and concrete.
City Hall, in the core of Corvallis's lively downtown, made $482,000 in cuts this year from a $30 million budget, and $2.3 million in cuts are on the list for next year. Revenues are running $3 million less this year than last, largely because of nearly frozen property tax revenues. Cuts in revenues the state sends the city have just begun. The city's rainy-day fund, the savings that cover unexpected spending, had $15 million two years ago and has now all but disappeared.
So far, one of three police officers has been removed from the schools, repainting of lane and crosswalk lines along the often fog-shrouded streets has been stretched to once a year from every six months, and contributions to support a playground, a baseball field and an environmental information center have stopped.
A program to maintain trees downtown and prevent Dutch elm disease has been chopped by $63,390. Volunteers have taken over much of the work in the parks, the library and the fire department. Working 20,000 hours a year, volunteers save the parks department the $350,000 annual cost of 11 employees.
To date, the biggest target has been the fire department. The city has set aside $1.6 million to build a new station in the fast-growing northwestern quadrant of the city. Construction has been delayed because money to staff the station had been purged. Because construction costs are outpacing the interest the city collects on the fund, said Helen Berg, Corvallis's nonpartisan mayor, the station will cost more than the $1.6 million once it can be built.
Construction of a $490,000 fire department drill tower and training center was scratched this year, too. In the face of the deficit's new discipline, the department buys most of its vehicles used. "Why send a brand-new truck into a burning field?" Nancy Brewer, the city finance director, asked.
Dan Campbell was promoted to fire chief this year from assistant fire chief. The assistant position might never be filled, he said, because others can take up the slack.
Corvallis is far from alone. Preparation for expected state budget cuts and the cuts arising from other state programs, like the state-run but mostly locally financed public employee retirement plan, and the toll of the property tax referendums in the 1990's, are forcing cuts and disruptions of valued services in local governments all over the country.
"States are pushing their problems down," Nicholas Jenny, a fiscal analyst at the Rockefeller Institute, said. Most cities and towns didn't share in states' big income tax collections of the 1990's, Mr. Jenny said. "Now they're getting the worst of all worlds."
Mayor Berg said: "I'm discouraged. We pride ourselves as a city that takes care of each other, and we're not going to be able to do as much."
Corvallis's biggest employers, with about 4,000 workers each, are Hewlett-Packard and Oregon State University. It is a please-and-thank-you, let-me-help-you, low-speed-limit, low-unemployment, quite prosperous town, and nicer than most. In the dead of winter, motels heat their outdoor swimming pools. A sign on the door of a Texaco convenience store says it will not take food stamps. But the sign adds, "Sorry for the inconvenience."
In the last fiscal year, through June, state tax collection dropped 6 percent while spending rose 1.3 percent. Meanwhile, voters are resisting tax increases to keep the spending going while state advocates of the poor and sick speak of catastrophe and crisis.
Because of plunging tax revenues, a tide of red ink in Oregon's generous pension program for public employees, and referendums curbing increases in local property taxes, Oregon has been slammed.
Now, for the fiscal year ending in June, analysts in Oregon expect the deficit to exceed $400 million and reach $2.3 billion in the two years ending in June 2004, or 16 percent of projected spending. Like nearly all states and unlike the federal government, Oregon cannot allow deficits to accumulate year upon year, so it must look for a mix of spending cuts and tax increases to bring the budget into balance. The legislature has scheduled a public referendum Jan. 28 on a three-year income tax increase, but polls show it failing.
People here have high expectations for public service. The city's asphalt streets, layered with bicycle lanes and right and left turn lanes, are crack and pothole free. At large intersections, pedestrians press a chrome button big as a lemon to cross. Promptly, the walk sign appears, and an electronic canary chirps them along. On intersection sidewalks, the city has begun laying slightly raised red strips, precisely perpendicular to the street, to help steer blind pedestrians along the crosswalk.
But for some residents — students, teachers, the old, the disabled, government workers — this has become an anxious town. Tim Turcaso, 36, says his brain has slowed way down. He speaks, reads and maneuvers slowly. One afternoon, four days before his high school graduation 18 years ago, he drove into a head-on collision, spun around and slammed into another head-on collision. "My egg — my brain — was shaken up," he said. "It put me in a deep coma for a month."
It also put Mr. Turcaso in an Oregon Department of Human Services category called developmentally disabled. After the hospital, he went to a state-subsidized group home. Then he moved into a conventional apartment, where state-subsidized counselors visit to help him get along and manage his money. "I hold money like water," he said. Counselors organize social affairs for him, too, and take him out for breakfast or lunch, one on one.
Mr. Turcaso goes to work now, on a bike, at the Taylor Bakery Oven, a nonprofit, upscale cake and cookie store with round maple tables for customers. "I'm a dishwasher slash cake maker slash cookie scooper slash and whatever else they want me to do," he said. He makes about $460 a month, less than the minimum wage, but enough to pay most of his way.
Schools, universities, services for the disabled and elderly, and prison and juvenile delinquency programs are high on the hit list. Among the old, the mentally ill and people with disabilities, "the people the state has targeted to cut are those who live in homes of their own or with their families," said Timothy J. Rocak, the chief executive of Cornerstone Associates, the nonprofit business that operates the bakery and eight other employers of the developmentally disabled in Corvallis. To date, Mr. Rocak said, budget cuts have been limited to a halt in cost-of-living wage increases. But if voters reject next month's income tax referendum, the legislature has approved more than $300 million in spending cuts to take effect Feb. 1.
Without the state's support, Mr. Turcaso said: "I'd have trouble staying on track. I couldn't work. For the most part, I'd be hunting for bottles and cans in ditches" to collect the deposit.
At the fire department, discretionary overtime, used when firefighters come in off duty for training, has been stopped. Some training, too, has stopped. "How do we provide confined-space rescue, like lifting people trapped in manholes?" Chief Campbell asked. "Do we raise our hands and say, `We can't go there? The money was cut for training for that?' No. We can't say, `We don't do that anymore.' " Two of three fire prevention officers, who inspect new construction, are high on the hit list. Without them, he asked, "how many fires would not have occurred?"
Cuts are coursing through other budgets that touch the town. Benton County has cut contributions to some nonprofit organizations, like one that traps errant wild animals. The county sheriff has eliminated some command positions. With the bigger anticipated cuts, Patrick Cochran, the county budget manager, said: "State courts, which counties house, are talking about nine-hour, four-day weeks instead of eight-hour, five-day weeks. We could have to hold weekend offenders a day longer."
With the deficits, civic values have begun shifting and clashing. In November, voters rejected a $1 property tax increase on $1,000 of the value of their homes, which would have cost them an average of $170 a year. In May, they rejected a motor vehicle tax. The same voters, however, demand more services.
"Sometimes the liberal position runs together with the conservative position," said John S. Nelson, the city manager. " `We want this street repaired.' They agree on that. But we can't agree on a funding source. That to me is an argument that the tax system is broken."
There just isn't enough money around to re-distribute according to politician's whims and fancies. Government, like the rest of us, will face cuts in this "depression."
Nothing more needs to be said. They are going to pay for these high expectations one way or another, either through their taxes or through their volunteer work. I look forward to the day when every municipality finds itself in this position -- where they can't just reach out to the next level of government to pay for these expectations.
It's hard to believe that these people can't go back to say the 1997 budget, before the bubble.
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More like coming to a war zone or battle field. The storm and flooding we are experiencing in the NW corner of the state is going to add to the misery level.
I'd be delighted if California's problem was on the scale of Oregon's. The way things are shaping up, we're looking at 30-40% of the budget having no funding. As Tom McClintock notes, however, that 'budget shortfall' everyone talks about is the difference between actual revenue and what legislators want to spend. It starts out with the assumption that we're going to spend last year's amount plus some percentage. Until we get rid of the mindset that budgets only increase year-to-year, we're not dealing with the real problem.
California: S&P: More budget cuts needed (Wall Street weighs in )
I pay for public schools but send my kids to private school because I don't want them indoctrinated and taught had to use a condom.
My kids' school is non-profit. I pay less than HALF what the per pupil spending is in California public schools. We bring in class supplies like color crayons, scissors, kleenex, notebooks, etc. that get through the year. We have lots of fundraisers, but we don't have to participate if we're broke. Public schools have the same fundraisers!
My school just built a new middle school and gym. Our tuition did not increase.
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