Who wants to talk about the town budget?

In my day job I have to work with tax and economic development policy issues in conjunction with funding for schools. The standard line we use is that 'you can't talk about taxes without people's eyes glazing over...'

I can readily understand how people become apathetic and/or cynical about politics on the national scene. I fight the impulse myself from time to time, and I've been a political junkie since the Kennedy-Nixon campaign of 1960.

But here in our town we have ward elections that can be won with as few as 20 votes, no? And our elected officials have authority to set the town's portion of our property taxes. If I figured it right, in 2006 the Riverdale Park portion was exactly 33% of our total property tax bill. In short, every citizen who resides in RP has real power to affect decisions that involve real money -- your money! Hopefully, too, we have real power over how the money is spent -- not just how much is raised.

I'm a new resident of RP. And although I've lived in PG County (Hyattsville before moving to RP) for about 7 years, I haven't previously paid as much attention to the tax and budget issues as I am now. I never thought of Hyattsville as a large town -- but I think I can truly say that the smallness of RP makes me feel like I just have to inform myself of what's going on, decide if I have something I want to say and say it. But first I have tons of questions. The more I look at the data, the more questions I have. I didn't want to bog down the official TownTalk email list with my thoughts, and that's part of why I poked around and thought I'd try this "blog" and see if it would work as a forum for discussion. I don't really like that it's *my* blog. So I'm not wedded to this format, and am hopeful that this might evolve into something better. I'd like it to be what I titled it -- a local coffee house, the one that oughta be up there on the corner by the tracks, where we could savor a nice cuppa and talk these things over in a community setting. I'm thinking there is probably a better way to do this, and I'm sure open to that if anyone has a suggestion and shares an interest in getting it started.

In the next post I'll throw out a couple of questions re our tax rate and budget. Please chime in. I know there's tons here I don't understand.