news-record.com

City Manager Rashad Young is no stranger to difficult budgets.

"In our community, we were so much more challenged fiscally than we are in Greensboro," Young once said of his previous job as Dayton, Ohio's, manager.

He may have spoken too soon.

Thanks to an ebb in sales tax revenues, the city of Greensboro faces a more than $11 million budget shortfall. That means considerable cuts in city spending.

One approach that seems equitable in theory but can be shortsighted in practice is across-the-board reductions. Better to set clear priorities and let them help guide what stays and what goes.

This would require close collaboration with the City Council and consensus on which spending and services matter most. Some council members might sooner find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow than find common ground. But they'll need to try.

For Young's part, he likes to preserve spending on infrastructure as much as possible. "If you don't prepare and have developable sites and have the infrastructure poised for growth," he told News & Record editors in November, "you cannot take advantage of those opportunities."

That's a sound approach. The city should never stop investing in growth.

But finding other places to cut won't be easy. The city might start by considering which bond projects might be delayed until the economy improves. For instance, a new $19 million city aquatics center was placed on a fast track in hopes of cheaper construction costs, but so far that hasn't happened. The $12 million in bonds approved by voters for the facility were nearly $7 million short of the actual costs, which have to be covered by hotel tax revenues.

Voters also approved $20 million on bonds toward renovating and expanding the Natural Science Center, but plans already called for staggering that bond spending over several years to contain costs.

Some will argue that the swim center will bring more visitors to the city, thus boost the economy, a valid point. But voters have approved so many local bond projects (a total of $806.1 million in county and city bonds in 2008 alone) that something may have to wait.

As for possible layoffs, the city should consider reduced hours and shorter work weeks before handing out any pink slips. That way jobs are preserved and when times are better, service could be restored to previous levels where demand still warrants.

None of these scenarios seems especially appealing. But if the council sticks to its desire not to raise taxes, something will have to give.

In times like these, you do what you have to do.