City of Winder leaders deserve a pat on the back. I know that sounds shocking, given that this newspaper has in the past couple of years been critical of some of the city’s actions.
The Journal has been especially disapproving of how the city has handled its annual budget process — it was a secretive system and even some city council members were out of the loop.
But it appears that a new day has dawned in Winder. City officials this year have put in place one of the most open, transparent and useful budget systems we’ve seen from any local government.
The city has scheduled, announced and opened to the public its department budget meetings; it will be posting its tentative budget online for public access; and it has scheduled two public hearings before the budget’s final adoption.
That’s quite a difference from the days when the budget was presented to the full council and voted on immediately with no opportunity for citizen or city council review.
It wasn’t that anything nefarious was happening. It was just bad habits. The full council had become lax about the budget process over the years, partly because times were good and money was almost falling out of the sky.
Councilman Ridley Parrish alluded to the old budget system last week. At a meeting about the upcoming budget, he said the council had not in the past been involved enough in the process.
“Thank God for the changes and may that never happen again,” he said. “I don’t think it will happen again, number one, because we are involved in the budget process together. We should have been all along. I’m one of the first to say I should have been there and been paying attention, but I wasn’t. But that is not going to happen again.”
It takes a big person to admit he was wrong and Mr. Parrish’s comments reflect a true awareness of what leadership is really all about.
It’s not that a huge number of citizens will suddenly show up for budget hearings. But knowing they can if they want to, and knowing that a transparent system for the budget is in place, gives citizens a huge amount of confidence that their city officials are being responsible.
So Winder officials deserve credit for taking a hard look at their budget system and for making the changes necessary.
Kudos to Winder leaders.
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I kinda feel sorry for the Barrow County Board of Education in its current efforts to come up with a budget for FY2012. Unlike city or county governments, BOEs are very limited in how they can budget funds. There are so many state and federal rules involved that they are budgeting with one hand tied behind them.
The state and feds don’t just send school systems a bucket of money and say, “spend as you please.” Every state and federal dollar is allocated for specific purposes; you can’t just shift money around.
In addition, the BCSS continues to grow at the same time its resources are shrinking. The BOE has no control over state or federal money, no control over the tax digest and it cannot limit its growth — it has to take the kids it’s given.
On top of that, the BOE is bound to catch hell from every side. Taxpayers want to pay less, teachers want to be paid more, some parents want more resources for certain projects. Anytime the BOE even talks about possible cuts, the public goes nuts with a backlash.
And there appears to be a lot of misinformation in the community over how schools are financed, AYP rules, etc. Misinformation coming from the rumor mill makes the budgeting process even more complex.
That’s not to say the BOE doesn’t have some control, but they don’t have near as much as the board of commissioners or a city council. For example, the BOE can only hire or not hire based on the superintendent’s recommendations; the BOE cannot directly hire or fire any individual except the superintendent.
The Barrow BOE faces a major financial problem in its upcoming budget. I’ve looked at the numbers and it isn’t a pretty picture.
So before we begin jumping up and down, let’s give the BOE a little leeway to work through the budget process. They are being very open about the problems they face and the options they have to deal with. They aren’t juggling the numbers to hide problems, as is common in many other school systems. The board’s openness is to be applauded.
The Barrow County School System has been one of the best managed financially of any school system in the area (academics, however, are another issue.) The cost per pupil in the BCSS is low when compared to other similar systems.
Nobody is as critical of education’s overall spending habits as I am. Wish I could wave a wand and change the entire financial structure of public education.
But we should recognize that local boards have many limitations other public agencies don’t have. And given those limitations, the Barrow BOE appears to be going through the right steps as it works on its FY2012 budget.
Mike Buffington is co-publisher of the Barrow Journal. He can be reached at mike@mainstreetnews.com. His publisher's blog is
here.
