I was a member of my town’s finance committee for about 6 years. I’m in my late 30s, 3 kids, wife, mortgage. I was the youngest member, the average age probably being mid-60s, and some members in the 80s (2/13?).
I resigned this last year. At our last town meeting, I spoke about this exact point, because it’s been completely lost / brainwashed out of the older generation. The majority of them say something like this:
I ran a business for many years. The government should be run like a business.
This is about as brain dead as it gets for this simple reason: the (local) government is not intended to make a profit (within the US). Every year, we know the town needs to produce a BALANCED budget, meaning no profit because you’re using the funds for services. Every dollar has to be appropriated to some funding.
In other words, there is no profit. It’s just services. The goal is high quality services that benefit the community, delivered on a predictable cadence. If we wanted to make a profit, we could make blind bag kids toys, low grade video entertainment, push TikTok shopping trends. We could make the services cost subscription fees on top of the product. We could make schemes & grifts, bullshit no one actually wants.
I want nice services for my quality of life. Over my time, we met with people every year for the budget, we’d hear about how hard they are working, how thin they are running, and now services being cut. This isn’t some federal government taking our money. This isn’t some state government taking our money. It’s money that goes directly back into where & how we live.
For 6 years, we talked like raising taxes was an impossibility when the majority of the funding comes from the local property tax, more-so commercial than residential. Even then, the committee kept making it sound like it will never work.
These people are absolutely brainwashed from years of Fox and bad faith actors. They only understand things in terms of profit. When encountering a situation where profit CANNOT LEGALLY happen, they STILL cling to it, and rather suggest we have too many teachers, or we don’t really need that benefit. They wanted to cut funding to board of public works, we had a snow storm, and next week, everyone wants to know the state of our equipment & whether BPW should have more money.
I couldn’t do another year of the collective amnesia with these people. We need more young people who give a shit in these rooms debating these geriatrics & reminding them about civics, but I’ve served my time for now.
