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Highlands Today

Local Leaders Need Help Crunching Budget Numbers

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 22, 2008

Being an Avon Park City Council member is tough work these days. They are tasked with figuring out how to cut large amounts our of the city's budget for next year. It's a job a lot of our elected city and county officials are dealing with these days, and will continue for some time to come.

Avon Park council members are going line by line in their proposed budget to trim whatever they can. That's what elected officials should do regardless of the economy. Everything's on the table, and there's no doubt jobs will be lost. That's the tough one. The last thing we need are more people losing jobs around here. But the city can't budget what it doesn't have, so very difficult decisions must be made. It's no different than the private sector, where jobs are slashed every day.

Highlands County has dodged a bullet this year with its budget. It's highly unlikely that will happen again, though. A rainy day surplus fund was tapped to keep from cutting job in the coming year. When that budget is finished, though, all bets are off. Unless something dramatic happens with the local economy, big cuts will be coming - or so it appears.

Sebring and Lake Placid are in the same situation. They, like the county and Avon Park, have been trimming for some time in preparation for decreased revenue. But nothing hits harder than an already tight budget being slashed by millions.

One thing citizens should understand through this process is that our cities and county do not have fat budgets in the first place. Some people make that claim, but it's difficult to find a lot of money being wasted in our local budgets. A lot of fiscally conservative officials have made sure of that over the years, and we're glad they did.

Expenses such as non-essential training will have to go. So will some of the scheduled maintenance plans, but that's taking a risk. We all know that it's a lot cheaper to maintain buildings, machinery, roads, etc., than waiting until a crisis situation, when repairs cost much more than the maintenance would have cost taxpayers. But these are the decisions that probably will have to be made.

Our elected officials need the public's help as they plow through these budgets. They need informed people to help them prioritize where cuts should happen, where efficiencies can be found and what we, as residents, are willing to take in the way of fewer services.

It's easy to be the cranky resident who criticizes "government waste" without offering any alternatives or identifying where all this extra money is lying around. It's much more difficult to point out areas where cuts can be made with the least impact to the public.

That's the kind of help our elected officials need during these drastic cuts.

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