Special Meeting of the MBoE Jan 2, 2008

Following on Peter's comment in a previous post, there will be a special meeting of the BoE.

BCCT, Saturday, December 29: "Notice is hereby given that the Borough of Morrisville School Directors will hold a Special Meeting on January 2, 2008 at 7:30PM at the Morrisville Middle Senior High School, 550 West Palmer Street, Morrisville PA.
The purpose of this meeting is to consider adopting a resolution promising to keep real estate tax increases under its designated percentage.
William Hellmann, President
Joseph Kemp, Secretary"

OK, you don't need to have a meeting for such a purpose -- there's nothing really to vote on here. So what's the underlying purpose? What's getting cut?

So what will they be discussing? Adopting a resolution to keep the tax increases under the 4.4% maximum inflation budget rise cap.

As arcane and convoluted as accounting is, governmental proceedings can be very confusing, especially to the layman. In the real world where you and I live, if you can only increase spending by a fixed maximum, that's where you start. Here in GovWorld, you set your spending and only then look to see if you have enough money. Then you proceed to cut expenses or tax your way to a balanced budget. The Feds do it all the time, so why can't the Morrisville Board of Education under the direction of William Hellmann, CPA?

So they are going to adopt a resolution to consider doing what they need to do as mandated by state law. Paging Gov Rendell: Pennsylvania state law is now optional in Morrisville. "Hi, officer. Yes, I saw that stop sign. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. In fact, I'm rushing to get home now to chair a family meeting where we are going to adopt a resolution calling upon all members of the family to consider recognizing stop signs and their function in everyday life. We will certainly keep you informed of our progress. I'm going to continue along now. Bye!" I'm betting the next thing we'll hear the driver say is, "Don't tase me, bro!"

In GovWorld, these resolutions are usually fig-leaf fluff to hide behind. "Well, we're following law 749-WKRP-8489.87 which states in section 4, paragraph 5 subsection 5c(E) that the following shall occur..." It's a responsibility avoidance tactic. The school board can always point to this resolution and say, "well, we HAVE to cut, because we're forced to by resolution blah-blah-blah." This is when Captain Algebra and the No Sports League can swoop in, dubiously claim the high moral ground, and then cut away meat and sinew instead of budgetary fat.

Let's look at the possible options here:

Responsible Budgeting: This one is already debunked and out of consideration. If there were hard budget choices to be made, they would already have made them, brought the budget in UNDER or AT the cap, and shown us the hard work of leadership. I don't think these one trick ponies know effective leadership, which sometimes means going AGAINST the people to do the right thing. Their mindless NSN stance is ample proof of this blind spot and character flaw.

Vox Populi: Hear the voice of the people! "Gee, we're really in a tough spot, do we cut algebra or history? You choose for us." And once this is done, then they can blissfully point out that they offered the voters the choice and that they are simply following the Will of the People, bearing no direct responsibility. This is sort of like how they snookered the borough council into being the bad guys who unanimously killed the school. "It was the council, not us! Burger, Panzitta, and Buckman did it." (Pick your council member as you will...it was all of them anyway.)

The Hair Shirt: BTW, the Yes, Minister series is a great place to see real government hypocrisy in action and keep the antics of elected officials in perspective. What this proposes is that when you need to do something politically suicidal, present it as the lesser of the two options. For example, we need to cut $1 million from the budget. Coincidentally, both the history department and the music budget are for $1m. Neither should be cut, so let's cut history. The outcry will be so vocal that we (silly us) will realize the error of our ways and (cheerfully?) cut music to save history. We all go home happy. Well, most of us who don't have kids in music, that is. Feel free to substitute football, soccer, chess, FBLA, for music as you see fit. Recognize the tactic and be prepared for it.

I'm giving you the warning now: This school board will go to great lengths to provide "Gee whiz, I didn't decide that" leadership deniability over leadership responsibility. They are scared to reveal the truth to their sycophants in the audience. If we let this occur, then we are just as guilty as they are.

Thoughts, comments?