Frugal Friday
Jan. 31st, 2025 11:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ecosophia
Welcome back to Frugal Friday! This is a weekly forum post to encourage people to share tips on saving money, especially but not only by doing stuff yourself. A new post will be going up every Friday, and will remain active until the next one goes up. Contributions will be moderated, of course, and I have some simple rules to offer, which may change further as we proceed. Rule #1: this is a place for polite, friendly conversations about how to save money in difficult times. It's not a place to post news, views, rants, or emotional outbursts about the reasons why the times are difficult and saving money is necessary. Nor is it a place to use a money saving tip to smuggle in news, views, etc. I have a delete button and I'm not afraid to use it.
Rule #2: this is not a place for you to sell goods or services, period. Here again, I have a delete button and I'm not afraid to use it.
Rule #3: please give your tip a heading that explains briefly what it's about. Homemade Chicken Soup, Garden Containers, Cheap Attic Insulation, and Vinegar Cleans Windows are good examples of headings. That way people can find the things that are relevant for them. If you don't put a heading on your tip it will be deleted.
Rule #4: don't post anything that would amount to advocating criminal activity. Any such suggestions will not be put through.
With that said, have at it!
Attend your municipal meetings
Date: 2025-01-31 06:42 pm (UTC)But think of your taxes!
Your municipality, working with your county, your state, and the federal government, determine your services and the taxes needed to pay for them.
That money comes from somewhere.
How do you want it spent? On the Taj Mahal of community centers?
Do you want to let out-of-town developers run rampant?
How about that TIF (Tax Increment Financing)? If that developer can't make money on that new project without tax cuts, is it really a good idea?
Moreover, attending local meetings means you get to know the people who run your town. They know you. They know your views. They see you as a person and not a statistic.
Every town has regular meetings on a regular schedule. Ask at city hall or visit them online. My township posts the calendar for the year for the board of supervisors, public works, parks and recreations, storm water management (occasional), planning, zoning board, and the library.
Sometimes, we get special zoning board meetings when something big is going to happen.
I subscribe to various township newsletters (each area has its own), the local newspaper (we're fortunate enough to have one), and our local business community's newsletter. I follow them on social media.
Agendas for the upcoming meetings are posted a few days beforehand.
When you attend a meeting, think about what you want to say before you get to the mike. In Hershey, public commenters are given 3 minutes to speak. A few minutes silent rehearsal in the parking lot will make sure you're concise.
Speak clearly and confidently. So many people can't do this that you, voicing your opinion on the Taj Mahal of swimming pools or tearing down a row of houses to erect a 10 pound hotel on a 5 pound-sized lot, will be noticed.
If local news reporters (from newspaper to TV) are hanging around, voice your opinion!
In the long run, we'll all be very much more local than we are now.
Build those ties and connections now.
You can make a difference at the local level because so many people don't bother. You also see how hard it is to get anything done.
And, maybe, you'll be inspired to run for local office and really get your hands dirty.
Re: Attend your municipal meetings
Date: 2025-02-01 06:22 pm (UTC)Also, my involvement ended when the district bureaucracy successfully convinced the council to pass a bylaw requiring all district employees and volunteers to take the jab. This included attending council meetings. The politicians were excluded from this requirement. Hypocrisy knows no bounds.
(To her credit, my area representative voted against this bylaw.)
Caldathras
Re: Attend your municipal meetings
Date: 2025-02-01 11:11 pm (UTC)My municipality is about 27 square miles.
Pennsylvania is divided up into counties. Each county is further divided up into townships (like mine) and boroughs or towns or cities which have their own governing boards.
My township makes it easy to learn what's going on, yet I routinely hear my neighbors complain that they don't know what's going to happen.
It all depends on your area.
If you can attend, even irregularly, it still matters.
Re: Attend your municipal meetings
Date: 2025-02-02 09:37 pm (UTC)I understand that attending these meetings may not work for everyone-- I myself have lived in a couple of places where, truly & honestly, attending local government meetings would have made no sense, a total waste of time for me because firstly, those places were run by nasty political machines and at that time I had too many other pressing personal responsabilities.
But now I live in another place, a smaller city, where it is possible. And the more time goes on, the more I see how gobsmacking amounts of taxpayer money get spent on the stupidest and even hideously corrupt ways-- and this happens precisely because the citizens are not showing up and shining light on it all, and pushing back. The officials start to think their you-know-what smells of lillies and taxpayer money sprouts on easy-to-reach bushes at the command of their magic wands.
In sum, yes, your participation could make a big difference in the quality of life in your community (the bang for the buck on your dollars spent) and also on on your tax bill.
I realize that we have a covid forum, but I'd like to offer a related comment here, having to do with local government budgets-- and frugality. At the time of the covid jab mandate craze, I not only recognized that both the mandates and the refusal of religious exemptions are a violation of human rights, and that they would be vigorously challenged in the courts, and that therefore one day, sooner or later, the fired noncompliant firefighters, police, teachers, healthcare workers and so many others, would present a dreadful fiscal problem for local governments. To those workers who refused to comply-- a very large number of people, though the mainstream media has tried to keep that inconvenient fact buried-- the local governments would possibly be obliged to pay back the all the wages and reinstate the pensions and possibly also fork over for damages-- and this in addition to having to continue to fund the salaries and benefits and pensions of all the new jab-compliant employees who replaced the ones who got kicked out for refusing the jabs. (Plus, compensation for jab injuries could represent a fiscal burden as well.) I really do think that, in a least a few places, a few loud citizen voices on target at the meetings might have made a difference -- I mean, where it was up to the local officials to decide on the mandates. (That said, I realize this not was not the case uniformly.)
My own new city is a relatively small one and I would like to think that, had some city council member been so obtuse as to attempt impose a jab mandate on the city employees, my voice against that, both on moral grounds and on fiscal grounds, could have made a difference. Fortunately, however, it didn't come up.
Unjabbed Typewriter Collector