At this point in the budget deliberations, it looks
like the Cape Elizabeth Town Council’s goal of being able to disagree
without being disagreeable may soon be put to the test.

    Without a budget an actual budget to debate, members
of the council are already wrangling over what the bottom line number
should be. It is a sometimes painful and awkward process to watch,
because there are no villains to root against– there are no strident
ideologues looking for any opportunity to shrink the local government
down so that it can be drown in a bathtub nor are there any closet
Wobblies forever dreaming up programs to lavish with other people’s
money. Yet these seven reasonable people may soon find themselves on
opposing sides of a zero-sum game: fund schools and punish financially
vulnerable residents or provide tax relief and punish developmentally
venerable children.

    Those councilors who took a pledge to limit spending
on the local level say such a dichotomy is a red herring: quality
schools and an austere spending philosophy can coexist as long as those
in charge are willing to make hard decisions such as downsizing faculty
and staff. They point out that there seems to be no relationship
between per-pupil spending and performance. Cape students outperform
virtually all others in the state even as per pupil spending lags every
other school district.

    Those councilors who fret that the drive for
efficiency has come at a heavy cost borne by students also reject an
either/or mentality. They argue that to hold hostage the future of
Cape’s children in the name of saving residents a few dollars makes no
sense. They claim Cape school’s high performance is now running on
fumes and is subsidized by the cumulative effect of individual parents’
high expectations and socio-economic resources.

    To some parents, the desire to withhold a couple
hundred thousand dollars school administrators say they need to deliver
a high-quality education is tantamount to scholastic infanticide
(Anyone who considers using the phrase ‘scholastic infanticide’
hyperbolic, has never attended a Cape Elizabeth budget hearing).

    And so, in the coming months these seven reasonable
people will listen to the hyperventilating on both sides– that they
hate children or they hate elderly people. They pick and tweeze the
budget, knowing that neither side is right; knowing that they love Cape
Elizabeth and knowing that with rising costs and limited resources
something has got to give. In the end they will end up with a budget
most everyone can live with, even if its one nobody is particularly
pleased with.

    And in the meantime, we can forgive them for getting a little irritable.

           
             –Ward
Peck