Facing the crisis

Picture Monroe County with its public parks abandoned,
trails and shelters in disrepair, Highland’s lilacs and conservatory a shambles,
Ontario Beach permanently closed.

                  Some
arts organizations and museums shuttered and others dramatically reducing their
offerings. The zoo shut down, the airport in disrepair, roads full of potholes.
Residents and businesses fleeing a city that has lost the ability to police its
streets and staff its schools.

                  City
and suburban fire services slashed. Suburban schools increasing class sizes,
eliminating music, art, and foreign language programs, cutting out sports.

                  That’s
a community where no one — no corporate CEO, no young adult, no parent, no
retiree — wants to live or work. It’s a community where robust economic
development is a pipe dream.

                  It’s
not the reality now, and it won’t be the reality tomorrow. But we are headed
down that road. You’re already seeing the signs, in city and county government.
And you’re beginning to see the signs in the suburbs, as they try to finance a
growing demand for services and avoid major tax hikes.

                  The
looming financial crisis is the most important issue facing the county and its
residents. And for voters, it should be the most important issue in the
county-executive campaign.

The county is spending more money than it is taking
in. No matter what you believe is the cause, no matter who you believe is at
fault, the truth is that the county is in big trouble. And that trouble is not
temporary. It’s been building for several years, and there’ll be no quick
rescue.

                  The
next county executive will inherit a financial disaster. Much of the county’s
spending is mandated by law and cannot be cut. The county has spent down its
reserves. It has spent the money from the tobacco settlement. It is selling off
assets. And it is borrowing money to pay for operating expenses.

                  There
is great pain ahead, of a kind that the average person in Monroe County has not
experienced. And without creative thinking, without unprecedented cooperation
among local political leaders — village, town, city, and county — the pain
will intensify.

                  A
blue-ribbon task force, appointed by the Doyle administration and County
Legislature Republicans, warned us of the crisis nearly a year ago. The task
force, known as the Richards Committee, laid out some solid suggestions for
addressing that crisis. The Doyle administration has ignored those suggestions.

                  Last
year, the administration announced major cuts in funding of social services,
arts, parks, and public safety. A bipartisan coalition pushed through a modest
tax increase, and reduced some of those cuts. But that simply helped solve the
problem for a year.

                  And
so there are tough times, and tough choices, ahead. It’s hard to see how we’ll
escape major cuts in services. And frankly, it’s hard to see how we’ll avoid
substantial tax increases. Even with dramatic cuts in non-mandated services, the
county may not be able to balance the budget.

                  And
some of those cuts will come back to haunt us. If the county doesn’t provide
enough funding for child care, the working poor will have little choice but to
stop working and go on welfare. If the county can’t pay for routine county road
maintenance, we’ll pay for expensive repairs later.

Money isn’t the only challenge, of course. The next
county executive will have to deal with economic development, environmental
issues, social-service delivery, and numerous other concerns. For the next five
weeks, City Newspaper will be analyzing some of the issues in the
county-executive race. We begin this week with an interview with Rochester
business leader Tom Richards, who headed the county’s blue-ribbon task force
last year and has participated this year in drafting two other reports on the
county’s fiscal situation. Our goal is to help provide context for the
discussions in this most important race.

                  During
October, Monroe County voters will be bombarded by campaign ads: on television
and radio, in print media, in our mailboxes. Those ads will be sound bites,
designed to persuade emotionally rather than to inform. Voters concerned about
the future of their community must dig deeper. This election will shape our future.
And we cannot vote intelligently if we are not well educated, about our
problems and our options.

                  What
kind of community do we want? What mistakes have we made in the past, and what
have we learned from them? What do we expect the county to do, given the
enormous constraints under which it operates?

                  What
are we willing to sacrifice, together, to dig ourselves out of this hole and
start building a stronger future?

                  Working
together is particularly difficult in Monroe County since increasingly, we think
of ourselves as residents of the city or an individual village or town. There’s
little incentive to think of ourselves as members of a larger community. And
there’s little leadership encouraging us to do so. But on November 4, Monroe
County voters have a responsibility to act as citizens of the Community of
Monroe.

                  First,
though, we have a responsibility to become informed.

This article appears in Sep 24-30, 2003.