Surprise, surprise! The budget holes facing Burbank, Glendale and just about every other city just keep getting deeper.
It’s a sure thing that next year’s deficits will be even worse, even in reasonably well-run cities.
America
is undergoing a dramatic economic change. We no longer manufacture
enough to produce high-paying jobs with good benefits that have fueled
our consumer-driven economy since World War II.
Most economists,
and city officials for that matter, know our economic troubles today are
not cyclical phenomena with recovery just around the corner.
Fundamental
changes must take place so we can rebuild our economies in the new
reality of global competition. Fundamental changes must take place in
how we define work and the good life.
Yet, resistance to change runs deep. We all want what we’ve had.
The
ongoing fights by communities across the state to reduce public
employee costs and preserve their redevelopment agency slush funds are
illustrative of the backward-looking mindset, futile efforts to preserve
the past in a changing world.
Officials are reluctant to lay off city workers because they mean
loss of services to a public that has come to expect so much from
government, so they keep looking for short-term fixes just to get
through the next 12 months.
It is a downward spiral. Like so many
companies that have failed, they are chasing declining numbers downhill
with no end in sight.
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