Massachusetts residents are engaged in a conversation about what kinds of services they expect of their government and how they would chose to pay for it.
In Tyngsboro, town officials are dousing the steetlights on all but the busiest thoroughfares in an effort to save money. Residents are being offered the option of an adopt-a-streetlight program whereby they could pay to keep their favorite lights on.
The Hingham School Committee is considering implementing fee-based all-day kindergarten. In Belmont, a Harvard Business School professor is offering to poll residents on what services they're willing to pay for.
The struggles around streetlights, education funding, roads, libraries, public pools and senior centers are inextricably linked to local aid, budget cuts and taxes. Until we can have this conversation about what we want and how to pay for it at the state-wide level, streets will go dark, senior centers will cut back hours and libraries will close.
Keep your eyes peeled for the Joint Committee on Revenue's listening tour. Legislators on the revenue committee will be visiting communities throughout the Commonwealth to solicit feedback on how our Massachusetts government should be funded.
(Cross posted on ONE Massachusetts)
It is the public responsibility to fund public utilities and services.
… but there’s nothing, I think, that would prevent us, given our current state of technology, from adding a line or two to income tax filing forms directing priorities for taxation. Kinda like where you can check off if you want 1 dollar to go to public election funds. I envision a system whereby fifty percent of you taxes goes to a ‘general fund’ at the discretion of the (which is just like the present system) and the other fifty percent sliced n diced as you see fit: I, personally, would like to see all of my tax dollars go to education.
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p>I think going to the level of individual street lights is kinda overdoing it, but the basic idea of broad categories is doable.
and poor children out of preschool. So I agree with you.
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p>As for the Belmont Poll story the prospective pollster says about his last data collection effort.
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p>But Dan Leclerc, bless his big heart, Chairman of the Board of Selectman points out an essential goal of building a healthy community.
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Jonathan Peachum, in Brecht’s Three Penny Opera, runs a business called Beggar’s Friend. The business outfits beggars. It claims to do so in a manner that will inspire the maximum of pity and hence the maximum of alms — of which Peachum gets a cut.
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p>One of Brecht’s points is that inspiring alms is not equivalent with needing alms. That is why I want social aid to be distributed based on objective criteria and not on what might pull our heart strings. Nasty, middle-aged, homeless schizophrenics need help just as much as shy, young, doe-eyed orphans even if pictures of the former are unlikely to grace appeals for giving.
There’s an element of participatory budgeting in this trend, particularly in the Belmont approach. On the other hand, it can foster a vision of government as a vending machine where you pay for what you want or need, but not for what other people need, rather than a means for all of us to help each other build and maintain a commonwealth (Facebook users, see the One Million Strong Against Socialist Fire Departments for a spoof on pay-as-you-go services).
It’s finally come to this… “Commonwealth” becomes an oxymoron in terms…yielding only a Dickensian framework where vital government once existed. I pity us if it comes to this. History teaches us that governments evolved when it became “cheaper” for a populace to pool its resources to provide certain services – protection, education, etc. Now we’re going to swing back the other way….right into the cave. God help us.
Follow this link to fight socialism at the municipal level.
… of the radio interview. Must see Internet!
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p>I especially liked the Priceline idea. Seems like everything eventually comes back to William Shatner these days.