A Small Win Is Still a Win
On a recent Monday morning, I hopped on a bus and headed downtown. My destination: city hall. It’s budget season in Winnipeg, and I was going to present our response to the preliminary city budget on behalf of our city-wide tree coalition. To our great joy, after five intense years of lobbying local government, our coalition had succeeded in getting some good policy in place and, critically, a budget to actually bring those policies to fruition.
People rarely go to these meetings to support a budget or say thank you, but as a coalition we’d felt it was important. City councilors are people, too, and everyone likes to be acknowledged when they’ve done something right…especially when most of the other people would be there to oppose the budget. This committee would be hearing feedback about a slate of outdoor pools proposed to be decommissioned, library hours cut from the central branch in favor of longer hours at suburban branches, the elimination of public art funding, and various other cuts in the community services portfolio.
It was not the first time I’d gone to one of these meetings, waiting patiently for my turn to speak with a mixture of jittery nerves and a sense of determination. I would rather do almost anything other than public speaking, and though the other members of the public waiting in the gallery were all there for different reasons, many of us had this nervousness in common.
One by one, the delegates got up for their 10-minute allotments. As I’d expected, there were a lot of upset and disappointed people. Stepping up to the mic, many admitted they were very nervous; I could see their speaking notes shaking in their hands. To his credit, the committee chair was gracious about reassuring them and thanking them for presenting in spite of this. It never ceases to amaze me how people will bravely step out of their comfort zone when they feel that staying silent isn’t an option.
Their remarks were heartbreaking and poignant. One woman cried as she described the impact the loss of her local pool would have on her family. (From the gallery, I got teary-eyed alongside her.) Many emphasized the transportation and cost barriers to access other facilities. All emphasized the vital role that pools can play as venues to learn water safety, offering respite from summer heat, and affordable recreation for families. Library and arts advocates gave informed and persuasive presentations, too, on why the cuts were unacceptable.
As the day progressed, I felt increasingly uncomfortable. Here were all these folks, rightly upset and frustrated at the prospect of losing important services and funding. Stuff that would really affect their lives. The amenities that make their neighborhoods walkable and keep kids busy and out of trouble. They were things I cared about, too. They’re exactly the kind of amenities and services that cities exist to provide. The ones we team up to fund to make our communities better; the ones that none of us could afford on our own.
And yet, there I was, about to get up and celebrate something good: an increase in urban forestry funds. A good anomaly in an overall discouraging budget. I knew there would be no tough or even combative follow-up questions to my presentation, no asking me to choose which of two terrible closure options I felt would be preferable. (I actually went to a similar budget meeting several years ago where every delegate was asked, “Where should we take the money for your cause from?”) And sure enough, despite my own nerves and shaking hands, I got through my presentation just fine.
My fellow advocates and I had worked really hard for many years, and had at last, cause to celebrate. So why didn’t it feel better? It felt wrong to be cheerful—we got what we wanted!—while witnessing such drastic disinvestment in other equally important city facilities and services.
I’ve thought a lot about this over the years, how awful it is to have your “cause” pitted for funding against others’ equally essential ones. I remind myself that investing in public trees is some of the best money a municipality can spend. Studies have pegged the ROI in the range of $6 to $12 for every dollar spent. As I bring up as often as I can, trees are the only municipal asset that actually increase in value and capacity over time. And so, you can look at a budget that’s good for trees but bad for so many other things in more than one way. At face value it can look like trees “won.” But trees are literally a money-maker, so another way to look at it is that they’re a high-yielding investment that, in the big picture, help pay for the other stuff we value.
Still, I thought, why doesn’t this win feel better than it does?
In part, I suppose, because when a city starts abandoning infrastructure it can no longer afford to maintain, we all lose.
Because if we don’t keep pressing the tree budget, those investments will be at risk of getting cut and we’ll be back at square one.
Because as the city’s financial position gets worse, it will be an even bigger fight over scraps. This is the bleakest prospect, because even when we do decide to put the brakes on unproductive growth and acknowledge the consequences of having more infrastructure than we can feasibly maintain, things will almost certainly get worse before they get better.
There are so many urgent, complex challenges that our North American towns and cities face today. Some are so large, it’s hard to imagine ever overcoming them.
But none of that means that we shouldn’t try.
And so, while the feelings of relief and gratification that come with a “good” line item in the budget are fleeting and easily overshadowed by the prevailing theme of disinvestment, I’m reminding myself that it’s important to celebrate a small victory. To look back and recognize that even if it’s only a drop in the bucket, even if there are more big challenges, even if we have to go back next year and fight cuts, what matters is that this time, we tried and we succeeded.
We are making progress. That’s the best any of us can hope to do.
Emma Durand-Wood likes walkable cities, front porches, street trees, bumping into neighbors, riding her bike, downtowns, and any excuse to check out a new coffee shop, bakery, or shop. A Winnipegger by choice, she lives in Elmwood with her husband and three children. You can connect with her on Twitter @emmaewood.