Birds Eye View
It's No Secret!
Maynard is a small town with a limited tax base that wants to afford the services of a big town or city. We have to figure out how to keep expenses manageable while raising revenue.
We enjoy our largely safe town with its schools, library, police and fire services, snow clearance, road repairs, and recreational facilities, even if the senior citizens lack a dedicated space for their communal activities.
How do we balance our revenue and expenses while maintaining a town in which we want to live?
Pathways to achieving what we want contradict each other - the quest for academically competitive schools may interfere with our ability to improve our water supply, provide for a new senior center or, most critically, may present many residents with the stark choice of whether or not they can afford to continue living here.
I wish I had the easy answers to enabling us to get everything we want. The harder answer is to strive for a town government that utilizes a coherent long term development plan that people are prepared to get behind and work in some harmony to realize.
Raising Revenue
We can raise taxes, we can attract new residents, and we can attract new business. We can also, with careful planning, maximize revenue from the State and other grants (for example, attract more families to keep their children in Maynard Schools). None of these are easy, but they will likely only move forward in response to a coherent long term strategy by local and state government and fruitful relationships with the business community.
Managing Expenses
I have been asked frequently, "what would you cut if you had to cut expenses?" This is a hugely challenging question, because when I look at the budget, everything of substantial expense appears to be justifiable. We have to accept the possibility that some services cannot be fully funded in the years to come.
One complaint I have heard is that if Maynard had done a better job of long term maintenance on its buildings, we would not need a brand new school now. Whether or not this is actually true, it appears that finding sufficient funding for the most satisfactory level of long term maintenance on buildings and other capital will always be a struggle. This is just one example of how long term thinking can have immense consequences for future expenditure.
Would I be prepared to vote for reductions? A wiser candidate than me might refuse to answer this question. The short answer has to be yes, because in some conditions, it may be the only way to make other services possible. Where would these take place? Ideally with a high degree of equity across all departments. It is a scary proposition when faced with the reality of services and/or jobs being reduced. It is easier and more pleasant to visualize creative ways to ensure that such cuts do not actually have to be on any future agenda.
Resolving the Deficit
A good strategy in the long term is for the town to get behind a plan that provides both the vision that is appropriate for the town, and specific action plans on how to achieve this. Many people and groups have already contributed much to the creation of this task. I suspect there are opportunities to improve the strategic planning and find ways to match the planning with actual progress. My conversations with several people across town reveal a determination to do this well in the face of many obstacles - not least uncertainty of many factors.