I spent Saturday morning picking up nip bottles* and more assorted detritus from the side of the road on East Street as part of the Community-Wide Clean-Up Day. So, I spent a lazy Sunday morning watching HGTV and scrolling through Facebook where I once again witnessed the budget complaint cycle:
Someone complains about their road
Someone else says to vote for the budget
Yet a third person says something about the roads and the idea that if you don't vote for the "bloated" budget you get "blamed" for the roads (sometimes its cuts in school programming)
Then I drop a string of links to paving budget stories because I am still naive enough to think facts matter
Usually, there's also someone saying that if we just did a better job of budgeting, we wouldn't have to raise taxes to fix the roads, but when I inevitably ask, "Ok, so what would you cut?" no one gives a real answer. Sometimes they suggest cutting the school budget, but as anyone who is paying attention knows, much of the school budget is driven by contractual obligations and state mandates. The reality is that cutting the budget almost always means losing programming and teachers (along with putting off a host of maintenance issues).
Many of Stafford's worst roads need a complete overhaul. They are essentially glorified cart paths with some asphalt thrown down. No proper drainage or engineering means they need a complete overhaul. That's expensive! We also happen to be living through steep inflation, and our budget hasn't kept up with it since at least 2016 which means our meager increases are not enough to keep up with rising costs.
The reason the paving budget is the first thing to get cut when Staffordites do not vote to pass a budget is because, as Director of Public Works Devin Cowperthwaite is fond of saying, "Roads don't cry." When the choice is between laying people off (often Stafford community members who pay taxes and spend money in town) or not fixing a road for another year, the roads get the ax.
This year, there has already been $300,000 worth of cuts made to the town side of the budget at the request of the Board of Finance. (The schools managed to reduce their budget request by $335,000.) While a good portion of that $300,000 will come out of the proposed road budget, it may also be replaced with ARPA funding. The other project that was cut from the budget was a roof repair at one of the public works buildings (making the leaking roof analogy I made a few weeks ago especially apt).
I know there are some powerful people in town who spend their time talking out against the budget. It's disheartening, to say the least, that they don't want to let people make up their own minds. I started this site to inform my neighbors of what's going on. I try to tell it as straight as I can, so everyone can make their own informed decision. I do, however, hope that those of you who do read and understand the articles feel better informed because of them, and armed to go out and do the work of talking to your neighbors. If you still don't want to vote for the budget, that's up to you, but you can't say you didn't know what was at stake.
BUDGET REFERENDUM: April 24, 6 a.m. - 8 p.m. at the Stafford Public Library
*If you drink Deep Eddy lemon vodka nips and find yourself being harangued by a local reporter in the package store, know that it's because I picked up your mess on East Street.