Bananas and Living Rooms

On Monday, December 1st, Rochester City Council will hold a public hearing on the single most important policy action they make as elected officials: adopting the City of Rochester budget. This determines how much more you’ll pay in property taxes. For 2026, it means a 5.9% increased tax levy ($118.2 million).

When making decisions involving a sum of money this large, it’s essential that all council members have, at the very least, two qualities: a non-Bluthian view of money and a demonstrated grasp of economic basics.

What do I mean by non-Bluthian? There’s a line from Arrested Development that you’re probably familiar with: “I mean it’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost? $10?” Spoken by the character Lucille Bluth who is out of touch with how much things can and should reasonably cost and is therefore willing to approve spending 20x more than necessary.

And having a grasp of the very basics of economics means being able to do things like identify the difference between fixed costs and variable costs. For example, when a library director informs the council that closing the public library for one day a week would only save between $110,000 and $155,000 per year (out of a total ~$10 million budget), it’s beneficial that our council members know why this number isn’t closer to 1/7th of the library’s total yearly budget or why the library’s yearly budget shouldn’t then be closer to $700,000.

Quick explanation: Closing the library for one day a week would be like closing your living room for one day a week. You might save a little on electricity (a variable cost), but your mortgage and insurance (fixed costs) would stay the same. For the public library, the stated variable costs of closing 1 day/week involved primarily part-time worker hours that would be reduced. Most library costs (salaries, benefits, building operations, maintenance, materials, contracts, etc.) are fixed and stay the same regardless of whether the doors are open or not.

Taxpayers rely on math like this making sense to council members who vote on how their money is spent. When decisions are based on incorrect understandings, it can lead to pushing for unnecessary cuts or misallocation of taxpayer funds.

Simultaneously, we 1000% should applaud attempts to reduce taxpayer burden and to be fiscally responsible. 

I grew up in an environment where tracking every dollar was part of survival. Money wasn’t this magical thing that could just be thrown around. Projects had a cost. Something around the house needed to be done? Then every expenditure had to be carefully planned for and work had to be done to shop around to find the best deals. This meant developing a skill early in life that is not evenly distributed in public life today: being able to sniff out those who are trying to swindle you.

Large sums of money naturally attract proposals that aren’t always as fiscally sound as they first appear. Swindlers are drawn to large pots the same way that bears are drawn to honey, and it’s important for anyone safeguarding public pots to know that a banana doesn’t usually cost $10.

Every single person involved in spending the taxpayers’ money should treat it the same way that anyone who has ever struggled to get by has had to do: recognize the ability for dollars to stretch, the importance of thinking outside the box, and the necessity of discernment.

Budget literacy is a challenge at every level of government, and to have the best possible future for Rochester, we need to ensure that the people voting on future budgets for our city all share an accurate picture of how costs work so that decisions are firmly rooted in reality.