With its proposed $33.4 million budget for 1995-1996, the Columbia Association is again reminding one and all of the enviable position it enjoys. With two reliable revenue sources, the association can propose more services while avoiding an increase in the property levy. Staff members would receive salary raises averaging 4 percent, while youths will be the benefactors of new programs, including midnight basketball and sailing camp. With so much abundance, what incentive exists for the association to be frugal?
That's precisely the reason it falls to the Columbia Council to impose some belt-tightening, although history suggests that likelihood is slim. The council heretofore has more often acted as a rubber stamp to administration proposals. In five years, the association budget has increased 34 percent.
The council has already shirked an effort to bring some reason to next year's budget by refusing to request that the staff draw up an alternate proposal with a modest decrease in the levy.
Even if the levy is retained at 73 cents per $100 of assessed value, there is some pain in this plan. Families joining the Package Plan, a membership in a wide range of recreational clubs, would pay 13.7 percent more next year. That's an increase of $75, from $546 to $621. Family memberships for Columbia's outdoor pools would increase a meager 1.7 percent, from $240 to $244.
Increases in fees, not to mention more housing construction, guarantee the association a hefty income at a time when other agencies are struggling financially. Critics claim that the planned community's bureaucracy has become bloated, and that restraint is necessary even if resources are plentiful.
But the advocates of budget cuts are not dealing from a position of strength. Last year's election for village board members and the Columbia Council produced a low turnout and little in the way of a reform movement. Still, efforts to incorporate Columbia have ignited considerable interest and may be the only source of pressure on the council to conduct its budget deliberations with caution.
The maturation of Columbia will happen when more residents get involved in the governance of their community. Absent that, the association will continue to put forward ambitious spending plans that lack the balance of careful scrutiny.