You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one.
I hope some day you’ll join us,
And the world will live as one.
Imagine
John Lennon
TO:
Joe Sinnott-Candidate for Mayor
Jack Anderson-Candidate for Mayor
Rick Filippi-Mayor
Other Members of Erie City Council
People of Erie
People of Earth
Dear Sirs/Madams:
The recent Erie City budget mess is sure causing a lot of folks a lot of pain. Innocent people caught in the middle are losing their jobs in the crunch and there’s nothing pleasant about that.
Some are saying that the hard line being taken on the budget now is just a way to make sure that it’s Mayor Filippi dealing out the damage and not a new Mayor coming in January.
You know, it’s the “doing the right thing for the wrong reason� kind of thing.
Whatever the reason, it is the big picture right thing to do to hold the line on grabbing year-end cash from our dwindling reserve accounts. Even a small homeowner such as me knows that you can’t keep overspending your checking account and pulling on life savings before a hard reckoning arrives. For whatever the motives, that moment appears to be now.
There’s going to be a lot of pressure put on public leaders to ease that pain, to find a means, any means, to make the hurt go away.
And it probably can be accomplished, for now anyway, by moving a few last minute bucks here and there. The problem with that, of course, is that it doesn’t avoid the reckoning, but rather just pushes it further down the line.
No, of what I dream is a place where the political will exists to do the right thing for the right reasons, a place of clear vision where leaders can show us a path through the short term pain to a place of long term stability.
A place where you don’t spend beyond what is brought in even if that means prioritizing and limiting what a city can do for its taxpayers.
Does that mean hard calls like selling golf courses and privatizing garbage service and outsourcing tax collection and moving firehouses and realigning police patrols?
Maybe it does.
It certainly means having the strength to honestly put those things in play on the table, even if the hurt for now is real.
It also means asking more of non-profits in lieu of taxes and working to attract businesses and finding other ways to increase what has become in recent years an ever-dwindling money pie.
Can anyone step forward to grasp this unique place in history, a moment in time, however brief, when the perfect storm has formed to give the right play a chance over the same old shell game?
How I want to believe.
Those who know Erie politics say I’m a dreamer. But to quote Mr. Lennon, I’m not the only one. I hope some day you’ll join us.
And our world can live as one.
Thanks for listening,
Scott Bremner