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io tne editor:
For people who care about such things, county budgets - far from being an inintelligible jumble of dull statistics - are windows through which the viewer can learn much about a community, the character of its people, and their priorities.
In this report on Rappahannock County’s budget, we go to the expenditures window, and we take the liberty of interpreting some of what we see there. Specifically, we are seeking to learn something about how we in Rappahannock County view our government and the services it supplies, and how our preferences for those services appear to be changing.
In this year ending June 30, we find, government outlays come to a bit more than 3.9 million dollars. Where has it all gone?
By far the biggest slice, nearly 69 percent, has gone into our school programs. But that big portion is a smaller share of the total than the county allotted to schools in the 1980-81 year, when education received nearly 73 percent.
Public safety - mainly the sheriffs office and the jail - has been next in line to claim a bit more than nine percent of total outlay. Small compared with education, but nearly double the 1981 share of less than five percent of the pie. Security, for our persons and possessions, appears to have risen more on our priorities list than education.
Other significant shares have gone to health and welfare, 8.1 percent, including all aid to the needy in our community. That’s down a bit from 8.7 percent in 1981.
By far the biggest relative increase has come in outlays on public works, up this year to five percent from 2.5 in 1981. Roughly two thirds of that expenditure goes for the collection
tion...and from believing to doing. For it is righteous action which will revive Earth and renew humanity, it is righteous activity which will take us beyond the principals and doctrine of Christ and on to perfection. There is no other way.
The present world system of econo/religio/politico control balks at tasting the new wine of siblings in God’s Family in action, preferring instead the old wine of inactive belief; thus the recent Supreme Court decision, thus the preaching of salvation week after week to the same people (all presumbly saved). So we can see that it is not the old way of faith-plus-nothing which the Supreme Court would ban from the Rappahannock schools-and all public schools - but the new way of action which best finds root in young minds yet unfilled with fixed beliefs. Maybe students would like to meditate on this!
PETER B. HOLLEY
Boston
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