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One needs look no further than Washington to see a political body that can draw out a topic well beyond the logical end and achieve little. The citizens of Susquehanna County need not fear that their representatives fit this mold. An agenda of 19 items would take only 35 minutes on November 28 as Commissioners Hall, Giangrieco, and Warren made fast work of the meeting and had no fluff to distract from the topics at hand.

With the budget looming it seemed to be the only topic not to be covered in any depth, aside from setting mileage values at 10.5 for general real estate, and .33 for the library fund. These were passed before the release of the proposed budget, which is expected to be available for public review on or about the fifth at the courthouse in Montrose. Anyone interested in reviewing the budget should stop in to read it in its entirety.

It won’t help them make the hard decisions, but it will help the Blue Ridge School Board more easily see the consequences of those decisions. It’s a “Budget Dashboard & Planning Model” – a “glorified Excel spreadsheet” in the words of Business Manager Loren Small – created at Penn State and made available through the Pennsylvania School Boards Association (PSBA), the lobbying organization for public schools in Harrisburg.

It will make it a little more difficult for everyone else to follow their deliberations, however. At the Board’s workshop on November 28th, president Laurie Brown-Bonner encouraged her colleagues to bring their district-provided laptops to meetings, declaring her “goal is to go paperless.” The copyrighted “dashboard” program is only available to Board members and administrators, and Mr. Small cautioned its users not to release it to anyone else.

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