Archive: Opinions

Easter celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Passover celebrates the story of how and why the Angel Of Death passed over Jewish homes when God enforced the final plague on Egypt, the death of all first born Egyptians, that finally led the Pharaoh to let Moses' people go.  Both tell the story of miracles.

These holidays couldn't have come at a better time, because boy! do we need a few miracles.  As I go from municipal meeting to meeting I get more and more depressed.  Everyone from the school board to municipalities are facing a Sophie's Choice -- which child should they save and which should they let be killed?

Monday I went to the school board meeting.  Even with a relatively liberal budget -- relative to what many other districts are forced to face this year -- they are cutting more than four positions, and about a half million dollars more than they cut last year.  School officials say they will have cut 44 positions over four years when next year's budget is enacted.  Next year they'll be forced to cut more as reserves dwindle and state and federal aid dries up.

Thanks largely to conservative spending and the very good luck that boilers and septic systems aren't needing to be replaced this year, it looks like the Angel Of Death has passed over Lansing schools this year.  But good grief, he's coming back next year.  The Jews smeared lamb's blood on their door posts so he would know to skip their houses.  Our school system is quickly running out of lamb's blood!

Tuesday I went to a meeting about the AES Cayuga tax assessment agreement.  Everyone was complimentary about the process used this time around.  I am convinced it was a good process.  Even Superintendent Stephen Grimm said it was a good process, based on real numbers.  He's been one of the most vocal critics of the renegotiation that reduced the valuation of the power plant by $30 million this school year and an additional $17.5 million next year.  Between the two that's like taking the revenue from 237.5 tax paying $200,000 homes away.

Grimm is hoping state aid will be resurrected.  My fear is that it will be.  That will keep the state in an unsustainable deficit situation, and keep state taxes, already the highest in the nation, too high.  Then people will leave and there will be fewer people to pay those taxes, and our taxes will go higher, and more people will leave...  Yike!

My fear is also that it won't be.  My reading is that the Lansing district has three years worth of spare change to play with, and then it's gone.  If the district doesn't make some fundamental spending changes that Angel Of Death will be waiting, and who knows whether the district will be resurrected?

So I'm taking next week to celebrate past miracles and pray for a new one.  As I sit in these budget meetings my stomach starts to sink and I go into a deep funk.  I think of my own tax bill and what it is doing to devastate my family's spending.  We all really need a miracle.

In a way, Governor Cuomo's budget is exactly that.  It makes extremely painful moves now with a realistic expectation that after a few years things will settle at the new level that is sustainable and will even encourage growth.  Wouldn't it be great if more people and more business came to New York?  And while it is devastating for schools, counties, and municipalities now, it could force them to re-form their own finances, making them sustainable so that programs can build and education can maintain high quality.

It reminds me of the joke about the devout man who refuses to leave his house in a flood.  A policeman drives by and says, 'A flood is coming.  Hop in, I'll give you a ride to safety.  He declines because God will save him.  As he sits on his roof, a man in a rowboat offers him a ride, but he declines because he says God will save him.  Finally a rescue helicopter lowers a ladder to his roof, but he declines again.  He drowns.  In Heaven he asks God why He didn't save him.  God says, "What do you mean?  I sent you a car, a boat and a helicopter.  What more do you want?"

If Noah had taken that attitude where would we all be?  So this week the miracle I will be praying for is that our taxing authority leaders will jump into that car and make their own miracles.  Or if they have missed the car already that they'll get into the boat.  The saying goes, 'God helps those who help themselves'. 

Waiting for the state to go back on its miracle isn't a miracle.  It's a flood.

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