The 'grief cycle' of Amherst budgeting

Published on June 22, 2007

Almost 40 years ago, the Swiss physician Elisabeth Kubler-Ross observed that terminally ill patients pass through a number of stages of grief as they come to terms with their impending death. Many now apply this "grief cycle" more generally to situations in which individuals or groups must face harsh realities.

Amherst is, I think, in such a position now. The Amherst we have come to know, and which has attracted so many people, received a death sentence in the form of the Finance Committee's careful financial projections that launched this year's budget process. Our task is to decide how to respond to that reality.

The situation is plain: State aid, which was cut drastically in the recession of 2001-02, has not rebounded sufficiently to let Amherst sustain its level of services. Costs are rising faster than revenues, so services must be cut. This has been clear for some time, but the Finance Committee's projections spell it out in stark detail: For as long as we can see, between $1 million and $1.5 million worth of services will have to disappear each year. This realization leaves members of the community at various stages in the grief cycle.

Some are still in the first stage, denial: behaving as if the bad news does not exist. Budgetarily, this means spending as if no limits existed, or as if spending limits apply only to other people. We saw quite a bit of this in the Town Meeting budget debate, as various interests expressed shocked disbelief that cuts could apply to their clearly essential activities. Wholesale denial, however, has been prevented by the Finance Committee's 1 percent cap on spending increases following the failure of the override. Reality seems to have sunk in for most.

But this has just propelled many into the next stage, anger. Some of this is generalized orneriness and hostility, some lashing out at anyone who tries to enforce budgetary discipline, as if those who are trying to deal with the problem are responsible for creating it.

Eventually, anger burns itself out and yields to the bargaining stage, the desperate search for ways to avoid the bad news. Strictly speaking it is not denial, since it acknowledges the impending crisis. But bargaining is not problem-solving, and tends to involve a lot of wishful thinking and grasping at straws. Many in town have been cycling in and out of the bargaining stage for months: One day it's an increase in state aid that will save us, then it is payments from the colleges, then a local option meals tax, and on and on. It's not that these ideas are irrelevant; indeed, they all may figure in a long-term financial strategy. But even the most optimistic estimates of all these things taken together do not offset the cuts we face, and the vain hope that they might prevents us from addressing the real structural problem.

When bargaining peters out, we crash into depression. No obvious solutions, and relentless reality bears down on us. This is the stage I worry most about, since it saps energy and erodes participation. In a governmental structure as diffuse as ours, it's always hard to keep people engaged and on task. If depression takes hold and people silently withdraw from the process, it will be very difficult to put an effective strategy into place.

Eventually, if we can avoid getting stuck in the earlier stages, we can enter the testing stage, and look for realistic, constructive responses to our reality. Many of us believe this should involve aggressive strategies to grow taxable economic activity, something the town has heretofore been unwilling to engage seriously. But perhaps that will remain beyond our willingness or ability to pursue. In either case, we need to test what is possible and move on to acceptance, working together with a common understanding of our situation and a common strategy to face it.

It may be that all we can do is find ways to responsibly ratchet down local obligations and expectations. That will be a grim task, but an important one. The lurching around and posturing that marked this year's Town Meeting budget process made an already difficult situation worse, and if we are truly destined to shrink local services year after year, we need a better way to understand and enforce our priorities. Personally, I hope we will be able to broaden our sense of what is possible, and put together a revenue strategy that meets our goals for the community.

But before any real forward motion can occur, we need to work through our perfectly understandable reactions to the lousy situation we've been handed. It's easy to see why any one of us would experience denial or anger or avoidance or depression, but none of them help us do what needs to be done.

Bryan Harvey is a Town Meeting member and former Select Board chairman.