Keeping the Lights on at City Halls and Schools: Inflation is a wrecking ball on local finances

~ Laura

My friends think I’m crazy, because I find school board and town council meetings highly entertaining with their intense battles over parking meters and reading curriculum. During our meet-ups for happy hour at the local pub, the girlies will even tolerate a short explanation of the subtext in some recent debate, but at the end of the day, they still think I’m crazy. They keep me around because I can switch gears and also talk about kids and vacations and the best way to make turkey chili. 

Unusual as it may be, attending these meetings are a window onto a world that so many miss. Other political junkies focus on DC, where major issues like abortion and student loans programs are at stake. But it’s at the local level where so much of our day-to-day lives are decided, everything from the recyclable pick-up schedule to the reading books in your daughter’s first grade classroom. Once you buy a house and have kids, those decisions might matter even more than the big issues debated in DC.

Read more at Apt. 11D, The Newsletter

Published by Laura

5 thoughts on “Keeping the Lights on at City Halls and Schools: Inflation is a wrecking ball on local finances”

  1. Lots of local and school employees stopped getting real raises after 2008. Not all of them can go into consulting.

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  3. I’m glad you’re having fun because there is a vocal segment of my town that is going crazy. I know you’re worried about the kids not being ok, but a lot of adults are also Not OK.

    We have a bunch of book banners in our town, fired up by the constant yelling on the red furry animal news network. They go to school committee meetings and yell and get kicked out then they attack the school committee members on Facebook groups. There was also some sort of attack on a teacher in the middle school who was quoted in a local paper (about the book banners) saying one of her students came to her upset about the attempt at book banning. So the book banners attacked the teacher and accused her of being a pedophile “grooming” the student. This is just not normal behavior.

    And don’t get me started on how these same people want to spend all the town’s money on new buildings and personnel for the police department and fire department, and none on a new library. It’s all really upsetting, and I am not looking forward to the library vote next week at town meeting. But I will be there.

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