Towns must define 'need' and say 'no'

A dramatic trend is evident in even a cursory review of Daily Herald pages these days. Everywhere, it seems, communities face the prospect of steep program or service cuts in order to stave off budget deficits.

A teen center in Arlington Heights. Police and firefighters in Hoffman Estates. Maintenance services in a Pingree Grove subdivision. Furloughs in Aurora. Unspecified layoffs in Palatine.

Local communities and schools, clearly, are heir to the same financial ills afflicting public bodies at the county, state and national levels. Ills also suffered, not irrelevantly, by the citizens and taxpayers from whom governments get their sustenance and whom they are bound to serve.

In short, cutbacks are a way of life for everyone these days, and it's important that municipalities remember that means everyone. Recently, we used this space to urge school boards to exhaust every option to cut spending rather than come to overburdened families for more tax money. The same call has to apply to other government bodies as well. Government budget balancing at all levels must start from the premise that, in this economy, people don't have the money to bail governments out with tax increases.

Yet, if one thing is becoming clear as the recession deepens, it's that we, all of us, need a better way to identify what is "necessary" and what is nice to have. Governments everywhere are finding that something's going to have to be cut and whatever it is will likely produce a crowd in a board meeting room.

During a standing-room-only discussion Monday over a plan to shut down a community Teen Center in Arlington Heights, Trustee John Scaletta described the dilemma succinctly.

"I'm just having a difficult time describing (the Teen Center) as one of our basic services," he said. "I want to see the Teen Center stay open ... We just have to find a better way to fund it."

That "better way" is an elusive goal for most communities. In Hoffman Estates, where four police layoffs were being considered on the heels of an agreement that headed off several fire service layoffs, police supporters crowded the board meeting room to decry the village manager's $170,000 annual salary and demand that the village "stop wasteful spending."

The problem, of course, is that one person's waste is another's necessity. Unfortunately for them, governing bodies now have to do a better job than ever at defining the terms. In the process, they are going to have to become accustomed to packed meetings filled with understandably passionate citizens loudly declaring the value of programs or services they aim to save.

And, leaders are also going to have to become accustomed to telling some of these crowds "no." That will become easier, if not more comfortable, if they do a better job of prioritizing essential services - likely based on public health and safety matters first and foremost - and then communicating those priorities clearly and often.