www.roanoke.com

Roanoke City Council met April 20, in part, to make an official presentation of the recommended budget for the city. We have been told the city is broke. However, that is not quite true. There is a "rainy day fund" of $19 million of our tax money that has been held in escrow, if you will, for the last 10 years. There is actually about $2 million more in the fund, but it is already spoken for.

The rainy day fund's existence helps the city to maintain a good credit rating, just in case we want to build an amphitheater sometime in the future. It is why services that we have been told are unaffordable sometimes pop up -- miraculously paid for.

Here's the rub: Are we more concerned about building an amphitheater in the next several years, or about building into our young people the ability to succeed academically -- thus ensuring the only proven way to succeed economically in this society?

We already know that students who cannot read by third grade are not going to graduate from high school. We build prisons based on the rate of school failure by the third and fourth grades.

Roanoke's public school system has a 52 percent high school graduation rate, as compared to Roanoke Catholic's 90 percent graduation rate. Such statistics indicate not only that it is raining, but that a perfect storm is upon us. If we decide now not to invest in all of our students, then other investments won't matter.

Further, we expose ourselves as hypocrites who care more for money than we do for the people that money is meant to support.

My young friends who are high school students report that there are fights every day at their schools. How can we afford to get rid of school resource officers?

Having said that, it is also true that teachers cannot both teach our children and raise them, too. Forty to 90 minutes is barely enough time to teach the subject. If half of that time is spent disciplining young people with no manners and who have no parents who parent them, then the wonder is that even 52 percent of our students graduate from Roanoke public schools.

We don't have to use the entire rainy day fund to make a real impact on the lives of Roanokers right now. Council member Court Rosen's proposal is a solid plan to avert the perfect storm:

Keep Washington/Fallon Park pools open this summer ($220,867). Keep the bookmobile ($60,000). Keep the libraries open as many days as now ($25,000). Keep 20 teaching assistants ($600,000). Retain two guidance counselors ($120,000). Provide summer school for more than just those legally mandated to attend, and use some of that money to keep the pre-K for 3year-olds program ($300,000). Fill 10 elementary teacher slots ($600,000).

No, we don't have to use the entire rainy day fund to make a real impact on the lives of Roanokers right now -- just a little under $2 million.

I was stunned at how Rosen's proposal was received. It is easy to see how some say Roanoke City Council members do not hear all the residents of Roanoke. The proposed budget was presented as a fait accompli.

When we were given the information that the repairs necessary to both Washington and Fallon Park pools make it impossible to use them, I was both mad and sad at the policy of benign (?) neglect that has led not only to parks that are not summer-ready, but, for instance, the many requests for curbs (some for more than 10 years) that residents in some parts of the city have made without result.

Hear us: There are people in parts of this city for whom the proposed budget spells disaster of the most devastating kind. We are in an emergency.

Federal stimulus money will not be used to create new programs in Roanoke. It will be used to stretch our budget to pay for existing services.

If we want to make good on the worthwhile investments that we voted our leaders into position to help the people of our communities realize, we must at the very least spend $2 million of our own tax money to ensure the future of all our children.

Make it so, Roanoke City Council. Make it so.