Local cuts to social service agencies are a disgrace

Concord City Council should cut CCTV budget

As a journalist who has covered municipal bodies in two different states for more than a decade, I am sometimes completely shocked at how intelligent elected officials can collectively come to some of the worst fiscal and public policy decisions. Call it “consensusitis,” if you will.

The Concord City Council’s decision to slash most social service agency funding by 33 percent or more is one of those decisions. Councilors will pontificate that there just isn’t any money despite all the fine work these organizations do. But that is not altogether true. While most line items in the budget were cut, one was not: CCTV, the cable media access center. In this year’s budget, CCTV will be awarded $11,000 more in operating expenses than in fiscal year 2007, according to documents. The amount CCTV will receive from the city this year is more than $234,000.

What is so shocking about this increase is that just last year, in testimony before a budget hearing to the council, I exposed tens of thousands of dollars in CCTV’s budget which should have used to fend off last year’s cuts at the recreation department and library. Thousands of dollars for personal IRA benefits, travel junkets, volunteer services, and legal funding and obscure miscellaneous line items which could never possibly be spent down. An analysis of the entire operation is well over due and might make for some interesting auditing, if anyone had the intestinal fortitude to implement some oversight.

But when asked if they had looked at any of this, the council’s silence was deafening. No, they hadn’t and had no intention of doing so, despite the budget crisis.

So, when budget time this year rolled around, and the warnings of doom and gloom started surfacing, and the Conservation Trust Fund got raided, I thought for sure that someone might finally take even a cursory look at the CCTV budget and all the potential money which can be used to stave off some of the cuts elsewhere.

Well, I thought wrong.

Interestingly, CCTV has shuffled its budget around. Sure, the money for the benes, dinners, treats for the board, and junkets remain. But CCTV has decided to take some of the miscellaneous money, along with the increase, and hire a sixth employee, who will handle producer training … A job which has historically been performed by the full-time employees who already work there. Since there are only a couple of trainings a month, viewers like me cannot possibly imagine that they need another full-time person for this job.

When CCTV came before the council to talk about its budget, not a question was raised concerning the meager fund-raising efforts, the lack of grant funding successes, the tens of thousands in developmental losses, or the extravagant expenses. They weren’t asked to explain the unneeded hire or to provide any information about the money they blew through last year or the fact that governmental meetings still look like 14th generation videotape in the digital age. There was no motion to make any cuts to CCTV during this budget crisis.

Juxtapose that with the questions social service agencies received about their fund-raising efforts and now, comments that they need better oversight by the council. You have got to be kidding, right?

The point is that about $60,000 or more could easily be shaved from the CCTV budget without any harm in current delivered service. And there is no need for a sixth employee while the rest of the city is in crisis. That is a lot of heating oil for the needy this winter or summer camp opportunities for less-affluent kids in our community. And let’s not even get started on the cuts to the homeless shelter, the rape crisis center, senior services, etc.

Later this year, when many of these great social service agencies start hitting us all up for more money to make up for the losses, don’t forget what has happened here. This city council thought it was more important to increase the funding for a cable access media center which few people use and even fewer people watch than to watch over those most in need. This decision, frankly, is a disgrace.

It might also be good to remember that 2007 is an election year. While there has been some turn over in the council recently, it does not seem to have done much good. Voters would be wise to consider electing councilors who understand fiscal prudence and the importance of social capital, as well as taking care of those most in need first.