Now hear this, cities

Let's get one uncomfortable truth right out of the way: When it comes to budgets, most people pay attention only after they've been bitten in a tender place.

Almost nobody shows up for cities' summer budget workshops except the people who are paid to be there. Letters to the editor decrying municipal budget proposals are rare. And when it comes to the obligatory public hearings before the seal of approval is applied with a resounding thud that echoes through nearly empty chambers, most folks are somewhere else. Most folks choose to be almost anyplace else.The thing about these city budgets is that they're important. Mighty boring, maybe, but important. They affect every single citizen in that city through the provision of services like fire and police protection. They make sure your trash gets taken away and life-sustaining water flows into your home. They plant the seeds for new parks and maintain the ones you already enjoy. They ensure the streets and sidewalks you use to get to those parks - and to school and work and the grocery store - are navigable in good weather and bad. And they do much, much more.

That's why, when we see that Coeur d'Alene is having its public hearing for next year's budget mere minutes before that budget is approved, we pause. On Sept. 2, the Coeur d'Alene City Council is scheduled to listen to whatever citizens have to say about the budget, then adopt the budget almost instantly. From where we're sitting, there appears to be no time for the city to make any adjustments to the budget no matter what citizens have to say, if they say anything at all. And that just doesn't seem right. Certainly, here and wherever else the budget is adopted minutes after a "public hearing" is conducted, citizens have other input avenues. They can contact council members directly. They can write letters to city hall. They can write letters to the newspaper or post rude comments on blogs.

While it's true most citizens will do nothing, that doesn't make what the city is doing right. A public hearing should be conducted early enough, in a separate meeting, that significant changes to a budget could be made if a city council so chose, based upon citizen comment at the hearing. Anything less is just lip service to the public, even if the public's lips aren't moving.