Hey, city! It’s time to rise

Recipes for stirring angst seldom are written in the simple form of, say, a recipe, but most people clearly know how to do it. In Waynesboro, the methods are familiar though elixirs are decidedly rarer stuff. Tax rates and declining city spending are the subject of all the current rage. On the subject of solutions, stares go blank.

The city will collect more property tax money because of an increased reassessment. A sudden minority wants to lower the rate. This is considered problematic because already there is less money to spend as a result of lost revenues from other sources amid the economic downturn. An assortment of groups usual in its appearance at times like these despairs at the prospect of reduced local government aid. But everyone cannot be helped. So what to do?

This quandary was on vivid display during a session of council hand-wringing last week. City Manager Mike Hamp, who has been tasked with proposing cuts and finding savings, reported that he’d found some of the latter, sufficient to put the city $16,000 ahead. He suggested, among other things, restoring $26,000 to the Heritage Foundation, which operates the city museum under the same name. Vice Mayor Frank Lucente suggested instead eliminating two furlough days for city employees, a move difficult to oppose.

Politically fortuitous for Lucente, Mayor Tim Williams has parted from his conservative allies on the tax rate. Williams opposes lowering it. The result is that Lucente and Councilman Bruce Allen can’t be blamed for spending cuts generally because they’ve not been forced by a reduced rate. But the angst persists. While no councilmembers favor increasing the rate, all who rely on city money want more not less.

Lucente’s solution is for groups and agencies such as Heritage and Waynesboro Downtown Development Inc. to be more or entirely self-sufficient, and for this he is pilloried, no matter the tax rate. We like the idea of self-sufficiency and take our lumps with him.

Meanwhile, ideas die for want of existing. One plucked from the newsroom here at The News Virginian bears repeating and makes one of two points worth considering. The suggestion is for the Heritage Museum to charge admission, perhaps $5 a pop. Multiply that by 3,000 visitors and that’s $15,000, almost 60 percent of the city funding shortfall. That also eases the fundraising burden, considerable now with so many hands reaching out for private help.

A spinoff of that idea: establish a single fundraising agency to cover all of the city groups and organizations that use city money. Hire an experienced fundraiser to head the group and a top-notch grant writer to pursue the stockpile of private and public grant money out there for the taking. Then divide the money.

And so the first point: Pursue meaningful solutions that aid groups in accessing more consistent, stable supplies of money rather than remaining mired in the tired political wars that are fought in this town every year. Our suspicion is that such an approach could net groups such as the Heritage Foundation more money than they ever could have gained from the city, and without the headache.

Now the second point: Those in positions to dictate the direction of Waynesboro, namely our elected officials (and not one faction but both), continue perpetually to ignore the larger issue. A vibrant downtown core, fueled by proven draws and transformed by them, would quell much of the muttering over what the fictive George Bailey described in “It’s A Wonderful Life” as “trying to figure out how to save three cents on a length of pipe.”

Some small towns pulse. Others lack one. The latter scenario is invariably the product of perspectives narrowly defined rather than of the limited physical dimensions of a place. If Waynesboro ever is to awaken, its leaders must first.