Universal Budget Woes

This past weekend has been quite interesting. As I flew south, everyone was wondering if the Federal government was going to shut down or find a way to keep going, a scenario that I remember best from an episode of the West Wing, a series I enjoyed immensely. I knew also that Governor Brown has California all in a tizzy over the State budget too, with anticipated shortfalls all over the place. In some ways I find that ironic because a fair number of the spending policies with automatic bumps in good economic times, but no automatic decreases in bad times, which created a big chunk of the current problems were put in place the last time that Brown was governor. Talk about your chickens coming home to roost! I was hoping to escape budget woes when I went south this past weekend, but alas, my wishes were not meant to be. I was merely dropping from the furious financial frying pan into the fretful fiscal fire. Specifically, this weekend was the first preliminary meeting of the Finance Committee to prepare all the budgets for next year, which runs from October 1 through September 30. I think that no one may realize how many different budgets that comes to because different groups put them together, but the poor (and exceedingly hard working) Finance Committee has to review them all. I think that we had six to give the preliminary look this past weekend: Grand Chapter Budget Grand Chapter Week Budget Eastern Star Senior Living Community Budget Eastern Star Professional Plaza Budget Endowment Budget and last, but not least, Foundation Budget I have found that when you have a really hard job to do, sometimes it is easier to start with the hardest task because once that is out of the way, everything else is all down hill. But when we started on the Grand Chapter Budget, it felt more like having one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. I have never felt so much like I was looking at a situation that had rented the farm with an option to buy. Last year at the Grand Chapter session, the Finance Committee had proposed a per capita increase of $4.50 per member. It failed by a nine vote margin. But this past weekend, we learned that they had been neither kidding nor exaggerating when they said that we needed the increase. Over the past four or five years, everything that could be cut has been cut to the bone, and even beyond, and as uncontrollable expenses, such as insurance, go up and revenue comes down, pretty soon you are making stone soup (nail soup to some with Eastern European antecedents), but no one is coming along to contribute real ingredients. Have you ever gotten to the point in your life when you look at a bad situation and then you look around the table, hoping that someone has a brilliant solution, but there is nothing but silence? I can only imagine that it must be a little bit like being told that you have cancer and there is a medicine that will save your life, but your insurance company won't pay for it and you have no way to get the money, so you know that even though you don't have to be doomed, you are doomed unless someone steps up to the plate to save you? This past weekend was a lot like that. Now I know that there are people in the same boat out there, people who have lost their job and can't find another one and are spending their savings and hoping that they find a way to make more money before their savings runs out and they don't know what to do besides pray and keep trying. But it is very hard to wrap oneself around the idea that if just a few people don't come around and vote yes to pass the per capita increase, we may be in the same spot. After the meetings were over, we went to a truly wonderful Social OV with a delicious dinner beforehand and then an evening of entertainment by members of our youth groups, who also helped serve the dinner. There were many wonderful pieces done. I especially enjoyed a couple of songs done by the choir of the local Job's Daughter's Bethel and I am wondering when I will have the chance to hear them again. But it was hard to get into the festive mood knowing what I had heard at the Finance meeting. At one point, towards the end of the Finance meeting, I made a comment to the others sitting at the table that I believe in the members of our Order and that I have faith that when our members learn about the situation we face, when they see that we have done our best to close the gap and make ends meet but that there just isn't anything left to cut, just like the unemployed family that is trying to choose between food, heat, water and medicine and just can't cut any more, that our members will step up and do what needs to be done. Now I get to wait six months and see if my faith is justified. This weekend starts tonight for me and goes through Sunday. I will be in Healdsburg, Martinez, San Francisco, Castro Valley, Lodi, Murphys and Merced.