Charette: a final, intensive effort to finish a project, esp. an architectural design project, before a deadline.
Charade: a blatant pretense or deception, esp. something so full of pretense as to be a travesty.
Last Tuesday’s first of three city citizen’s budget meetings, held at the Northwest Recreational Center, set up as a “charette” was, presumably, to be a lesson in public participation about the realities of cutting a city budget. After an overview of city revenues and expenditures by city budget officer Ed Van Eenoo, the 200 plus citizens in attendance, in groups of seven or eight to a table, voted on a sanitized list of some 30 budget cuts and revenue raising items.
As the first citizen to speak pointed out, the $2,000,000 annual payment to the Domain Shopping Mall was conspicuously absent, something they strongly objected to along with the 4th speaker.* (We swear to you, we did not seed the attendees!). One attendee had the idea of using funds saved by lowering the pay of the highest paid police force in the state (APD), to start the next cadet class. But renegotiation of the police union contract was not on the table.
Meanwhile, the rest of us peons in Austin are related to like well… peons, being asked questions like, ‘Would you prefer to cut libraries or charging people to get in to the Trail of Lights’!
In all fairness the City is doing some things right. The City Manager added an item to this year’s budget reduction proposal (page 313) to increase various fees for the City’s review of the larger development projects. It also creates a new category for smaller projects to more equitably distribute the fees among users. The overall proposal would raise an additional $370,750 and is at least a start, albeit a modest one. Bue it was KVUE’s story on June 3 that began to expose the 800 pound gorilla in the room — that some people (we wonder who) are projecting that the population of our metro area will double from 1.3 million to 2.7 million by 2025. Who’s going to pay for this growth? If nothing changes, it will continue to be us peons.
The short story on the City of Austin’s 2009-2010 Budget is this: the budget items selected for public scrutiny were limited to items m, n, o, and z. Unfortunately for us, the rest of the alphabet soup covering the full width and breadth of the budget were off limits.
Is this process a charette or a charade? Perhaps it is both. Our local “progressive” politics is becoming better known as Austin’s favorite pastime — confuse the voters.
If you want to participate and see for yourself, you might attend the second or third (and last) of these charades, uh, we mean charettes, this Monday or Tuesday (listed below). We’d love to get your feedback on this page either now or after you attend one of the meetings.
Peon: a person held in servitude to work off debts or other obligations.
Peons unite!
Monday, June 15, 6:30-8:30 pm – Gus Garcia Recreation Center, 1201 E. Rundberg
Tuesday, June 16, 6:30-8:30 pm – Toney Burger Activity Center, 3200 Jones Road
* Just in case you bought the Mayor’s TV ads last year opposing Prop 2 (paid for by the Mall’s developer, Simon Properties, the Real Estate Council of Austin and the Chamber of Commerce), the City’s contract with the Mall includes a clause Brian Rodgers, co-founder of ChangeAustin.org, won in court several years ago. That clause allows the City to walk away from the deal anytime without penalty.