The Town-Hall Meeting (Updated 3)

Updated 2010-08-28 15:57: linked to the P-G’s coverage of the protest.
Updated 2010-08-28 16:04: linked to moderator Anthony Moretti’s post on the meeting.
Updated 2010-08-28 16:34: linked to LeboCitizen.com’s audio recording.


Protesters gather outside of the municipal building


Panel members (left to right) James Fraasch, Matt Kluck, Eleanor Carpenter, and Frank Gamrat. (Moderator Anthony Moretti not shown.)

From 9:30 to 11:00 AM on Saturday, 28 August, 2010, a group of about 80 people filled the Mt. Lebanon municipal chambers for an invitation-only meeting styled after a town hall. The topic: the Mt. Lebanon economy and taxes.

Protesters were gathered outside, apparently under the impression that the meeting was some ploy to stop the high-school project. (The project was mentioned only briefly during the meeting and, even then, was described as mostly a done deal.)

Inside, a panel of four was presented to the community as having insight into different aspects of Mt. Lebanon’s economy. The panel members were James Fraasch (school-board director), Matt Kluck (municipal commissioner), Eleanor Carpenter (real-estate agent), and Frank Gamrat (economist and senior research associate for the Allegheny Institue). All panel members said they were offering their opinions and not acting in any official capacity. Anthony Moretti moderated the discussion, presenting questions from the audience and keeping the conversation moving.

The meeting was recorded and, I understand, will be viewable online early next week. (You can listen to it right now, thanks to the audio recording at LeboCitizens.com.)

If you want to know what happened at the meeting – or what all the fuss was about – I encourage you to watch the recording. My guess is that you will find it both informative and uncontroversial.

In any case, Matt Kluck, who expressed surprise at the large turnout, said he wants to hold at least one more of the town halls. Next time, he said, it would be in a venue large enough to hold everybody who wants to attend.

Read more:

• Mt. Lebanon residents protest commissioner's meeting (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
• Open or closed? (Anthony Moretti’s blog)

School Board Approves 10.5% Tax Hike and Creates Task Force to Reduce Future Costs

Tonight, the school board voted 6-2 to approve a final budget of $79.4 million for the 2010–2011 school year. The budget raises school real-estate taxes to 26.63 mills, an increase of 10.5 percent. Voting for the budget were Directors Birks, Cappucci, Ostergaard, Posti, Remely, and Rose. Voting against were Directors Fraasch and Stipanovich.

Those supporting the budget said it represented many hard decisions, all carefully considered. They emphasized that the district held the line on normal operating costs: the large increase, they offered, was the result of unavoidable pension costs and debt service on the $75-million bond for the high-school project.

Those opposing the budget argued that it was wrong for the board to tax its way out of a spending problem. They pointed out that this year’s cost increases were foreseeable, and yet the board did not adequately prepare for those increases in previous years. They also suggested that the economy has forced the community to tighten its belt, so why shouldn’t the school district tighten its belt, too? Why should the school district, they argued, be able to offload its financial problems when everybody else must make ends meet the hard way?

After this discussion, the vote was taken. The budget passed. Nobody seemed to feel good about it.

On a hopeful note, the board voted unanimously on a different motion, one to approve the formation of a “task force” to reduce operating costs. To make meaningful reductions, the logic goes, the board needs more time than the traditional budgeting process provides; the task force solves this problem by looking into the budget on an ongoing basis. When next year’s budget comes due, the board (one hopes) will finally have the options it needs to make those “hard decisions” we keep hearing about.

In the meantime, this task force represents the acid test for those school-board directors who talk about controlling costs but don’t do much cost-controlling. If they are serious about their commitment, they will give the task force what it needs to be effective – and then let it do its job.

The next few school board meetings are where the task force will be defined. They will determine whether the task force is real or not.

Let’s see what happens.

How to Brew an Economic Perfect Storm in One Easy Lesson

There’s a lesson to be learned from the economic “perfect storm” that’s brewing. It’s a lesson about how to brew such storms.

It’s easy: just take a small storm and feed it.

Each time our elected representatives, at any level of government, decide to spend what they deem affordable in light of immediate circumstances, but fail to adequately consider the wider consequences of their spending, especially the consequence that a number of such “affordable” purchases can easily add up to more than can be payed for, the storm grows a little stronger. Each time our elected representatives convince themselves that this project is worth the cost but fail to consider all the other representatives who are telling themselves the same thing about their projects, the storm grows a little stronger. And each time our elected representatives tell us that they are “going to have to make hard decisions” but fail to make them on this project, passing them down the line instead, the storm grows a little stronger.

Seen in this light, the high school project isn’t the problem; it’s a symptom. It’s a symptom of the disease that plagues the way our elected representatives make decisions. And that disease is nearsightedness.

Our representatives cannot see beyond their own projects and decisions. They cannot see far enough to realize that other representatives are making the exact same decision that they are, the decision to spend boldly (not frugally) because this project is worth the cost. They cannot see far enough to realize that all projects are worth their costs to the people behind them. They cannot see far enough to realize that all projects, together, cost more than can be payed for. Each time our leaders fail to see these things, the storm grows stronger.

Out of our nearsightedness, we have brewed quite a storm for ourselves. A nearly perfect storm. It approaches. It is nearly upon us.

Still, we feed it.

Updated 2010-02-17 16:50 with minor edits for clarity.

Recession in Lebo?

Is there evidence of recession in the Mt. Lebanon economy? Report, if you can, from the front lines of jobs and job searching, restaurants and other small business, banking, real estate, economic development, not-for-profit fundraising, and so on.

Congressman Murphy Votes Against Bailout Bill

With 1,500 indignant calls and e-mails six weeks before Election Day, there was no mystery left for U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy when it came to how to vote on the Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 -- the one his constituents called simply The Bailout.

"I've never heard someone get to Congress saying, 'Elect me and I'll make sure we have more mortgage-backed securities to base our economy on,' " the South Hills congressman said yesterday. Moments earlier, Mr. Murphy and 227 other House members -- most of them rank-and-file -- turned back the Bush administration's plea for $700 billion to rescue the credit market.

Link: www.postgazette.com/pg/08274/916152-28.stm

Link 2: community.post-gazette.com/blogs/earlyreturns/archive/2008/09/29/altmire-murphy-vote-nay.aspx