It required less than fifteen minutes for the Charlottesville City Council to pass its nearly $150 million budget Wednesday, and rightly so. The budget - the first passed during this Council's term - covers the next fiscal year and offers University students both tangible benefits and a model for effective governance.
The meeting took so little time because "[a]ll budget decisions have been made and this is simply the final vote," Leslie Beauregard, director of budget and performance management, said in an email. Council passed several amendments unanimously before adopting the budget in the same manner. This is not evidence of groupthink or haste - in fact, council denied funding to some groups whose requests for money came late. The minutes for this meeting were the epilogue to the longer process of reading and discussing the budget.
Passing a budget can be a cause for celebration for those who benefit - in this case, the students. The budget allocated an additional $3.4 million to Charlottesville schools in what Council members described as a short-term allowance to compensate for the lack of state funding.
Though nearly one-third of the budget went to local K-12 schools, University students will gain from the budget's prioritization of public safety and transit. Behind K-12 education, the budget's second-highest funding target was public transportation, which accounted for about a quarter of the budget. Ten percent of the pie went to City transportation, including the Charlottesville Area Transit which hopes to use this money to further its plans for expansion.
Council also passed an amendment Wednesday ensuring $50,000 of its budget went toward providing a living wage for City employees. This was not a rash decision as Council had previously drawn attention to its failure to reach its goal to pay City employees a living wage. An estimate in March said it would cost $35,000 plus the value of benefits to ensure remaining employees who earn less than $13 per hour are brought up to that level.
At the meeting, Council did not decide exactly how this $50,000 would contribute toward achieving the living wage, and this may be a cause for concern. After all, much of the on-Grounds debate about a University living wage resulted not from differences of principle but of practice. To move forward with the money in hand but not a blueprint could seem imprudent to some.
But we commend this decision and others characteristic of how Council approached this budget. Rather than waiting for the state to hand it down funds, which were delayed because of protracted budget negotiations, Council first decided which goals were important. Plugging the holes in the living wage was one; helping local schools was another. Council passed these measures, and did what it could to make corresponding changes in revenue, such as moving up the date of collection for a meals tax after realizing doing so would bring money more quickly.
Council was able to pass a budget which addressed concerns in the community, and both students and administrators could learn from this smooth but deliberate process.
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