Here's a letter to the editor, submitted about the city job cuts. Lots of our friends lost their jobs. :(
Dear Editor,
With the recent city job cuts, it has become more clear that budget spending at both the state and local levels is being drastically mismanaged. This week’s abrupt cuts have been publicly deemed irresponsible and rude.
Most of the lost jobs were held by college students working summer jobs. They had been almost guaranteed their jobs would be stable. These are jobs that all of us depend on, like grass cutting at local parks, cemetery maintenance and traffic signal pole painting. Shouldn’t these costs be cut from other places where there is actual wasteful spending?
Testimonials were published by the HTR that showed the horrid effects this job loss could have on already cash strapped youth. Tuition hikes around the state have not nearly been matched by financial aid and scholarship opportunities. By my count, seventy students probably won’t return to the city next summer in search of work. Seventy students won’t return and support the local economy. Seventy students will have a more difficult time affording the education those of us at college age are told is essential to our futures.
We should feel sorry for our friends who can’t get the aid they need and worked for the city performing needed tasks. Why add to the pessimistic attitude already held by many college students about the future job market in their hometown and home state?
We should feel ashamed of those who make these decisions. Do we have to throw tea in the harbor before they will realize financially harming young adults should not be the first place to start when cuts are needed?
Posted by mbare at August 07, 2003 06:38 PM
Not that I'm a naysayer, but is it better or worse to do this, or to lay off a single full time employee? Though it's veyr important money to the students who lost their jobs, in the city's budget I'd guess that one full time job lost would make up the money quickly. But what's more important? The tuition, book, and spending money for a group of students, or the livelihood of a family of four or five?
These are the kinds of decisions that officials have to make every time money gets tight, and no matter what decision they make, someone is hurt. Should we complain about it when the people who are hurt are our friends and peers? Yes! But it's also important to remember that that doesn't necessarily mean that the money is being mismanaged. I would want to know a great deal more before I made that judgment.