Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

In Dunedin, officials share in cutback pain

By A TIMES EDITORIAL
Published July 13, 2007

Local elected officials have been talking for weeks about how they will have to eliminate programs, lay off workers and cut grants to nonprofits to meet tax cuts mandated by the state Legislature.

They've been virtually silent, however, on how they might individually contribute to the cost cutting.

Elected commissions and councils generally have a budget for items like travel, education and other expenses. Most elected officials, these days, also get paid at least a small salary for their service.

You would think they would be falling over each other to at least cut their travel and education budgets, if for no other reason than the "we share your pain" message it would send to government employees and the public.

Credit Dunedin city commissioners with realizing that they need to use the budget-cutting ax on their own budgets, too. At a budget workshop Tuesday night, commissioners decided to cut their own travel budgets so they would not have to cut grants that help fund not-for-profit groups so deeply.

The city manager's budget proposal had called for grants to such groups to be cut by 20 percent in the 2007-08 budget year. Commissioners instead reduced the cut to 10 percent and made up some of the difference by cutting their travel allowances in half. Rather than getting $4,000 next year for travel, Dunedin commissioners each will get $2,000.

Nothing is set in stone. The Tuesday meeting was only the first of a number of city budget sessions, and commissioners may find it difficult to make all the cuts needed to reach the Legislature's mandate. There may be deeper cuts in the future, too, as only part of the Legislature's tax reform package has been implemented. Nonprofits may have to rely more on donations from the public; Dunedin commissioners may have to cut into the remaining $2,000 in their travel budgets.

However, the message sent Tuesday was an important one. In hard times, residents of Dunedin likely would rather keep some of the city services now at risk of cuts than to send their elected officials on jaunts to conventions or workshops.

Dunedin commissioners clearly understand that sentiment.

Now, if only state legislators, many of whom plan to attend conventions in Boston and Philadelphia this summer on the taxpayers' dime, would demonstrate a similar sensitivity.

[Last modified July 13, 2007, 07:52:26]