Community or corporation?

By JIM OLDHAM

Published on April 18, 2008

Amherst faces real fiscal challenges, but not all negative consequences stem from a real shortage of funds. There is also the way financial shortfalls are used to justify abandoning basic principles. As we debate more belt tightening, we need to be cautious of "solutions" that change the character of our community. I am concerned about cuts in funding to human service agencies and lay-offs of school cafeteria workers. Such choices make Amherst a colder, meaner place while providing no meaningful financial gain.

Since the 1980s, Amherst has paid small but crucial grants from our operating budget to outside agencies offering emergency services to Amherst residents. These programs provide food shelter, clothing and health insurance to those in need, support for at-risk youth, and services for struggling families. By supporting such programs, we recognize their important contribution to public safety and well being in our town.

Unfortunately, tight budgets have lead some town leaders, notably our unelected finance committee and Town Manager, to target the human services grants for cuts, even though they represent a miniscule portion of our entire budget. Sadly, even after Town Meeting rejected major cuts in FY07, last year saw human services grants cut from $140,000 to $66,000. This year the manager proposed their elimination altogether.

Fortunately there has been a public outcry and there now seems to be consensus on the Select Board for retaining $66,000 for human service agencies. However, funding is not yet guaranteed. More importantly, rather than simply preserve the $66,000, we should restore funding to the $140,000 level it was at when these cuts began.

Can we afford it? Yes. The amounts under discussion, while crucial to those who depend on the human services, are insignificant in the context of the millions of dollars managed by the town and the schools.

Here's how Andy Churchill, chairman of the Amherst School Committee, thinks about sums under $500,000. In a February commentary, while clarifying and correcting public understanding of the Regional Schools' budget, Churchill described $421,000 as being "only 1.5 percent in a $27 million budget," the equivalent, he explained, of $750 dollars in a $50,000 family budget. Not very much really, and, as he points out, within the normal range of variation that occurs between planned and actual budgets "even with prudent and informed fiscal management." In other words, in a large budget, such a small amount is lost amongst inevitable minor imprecisions.

What does this mean for human services funding? The full $140,000 funding that I propose is less than a third of the amount Mr. Churchill was discounting. It is less than one percent of the general budget overseen by the Town Manager and under 0.2 percent of the total amount Amherst will spend on town and school budgets next year. Using the analogy of a family budget, $140,000 for human services is equivalent to less than $100 for a family earning $50,000 a year. Surely Amherst can afford that.

What Amherst can't afford is a management style forgets that the people our town serves and those we employ are our neighbors, our friends, ourselves. This is exactly what the School Committee and superintendent have forgotten in reneging on a commitment to retain long-time cafeteria workers as town employees. Initially they claimed this would save $150,000 (again, much less than the sum Mr. Churchill considered unimportant). Now it turns out that even that savings is unreal. Still, the administration presses ahead, in spite of objections from parents, students, teachers and others.

As this column goes to press, lunch ladies are facing administration demands that they accept severance packages and transfer to a private contractor without even having details of the schools' agreement with the contractor. What is known isn't good. Their health plan will be much worse, employees working between 20 and 30 hours per week will lose benefits, and many will lose retirement benefits or see them significantly reduced.

This treatment of the cafeteria workers, like the human services cuts, cannot be justified for financial reasons. These actions can only be understood as political. We are seeing a drive toward a corporate management style of our town and schools that treats people - especially the lowest paid and most vulnerable - as expendable, and devalues the ties that connect us to one another. The impact on our community, and the implications for who we are, is large.

Concerned citizens can still reverse these bad decisions and challenge this management style, but we need to continue to call the School Committee, Select Board and Town Meeting members, show up at meetings, and speak out for fully funded human services and keeping cafeteria workers as town employees.

Jim Oldham, Town Meeting member from precinct 5 and member of the Comprehensive Planning Committee, does environmental justice work in Massachusetts and Ecuador.