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cooling-centers · budget-language · ward-12 · district-hearing · precedents-wanted
Permanent means funded. That was the whole fight. I am stealing that sentence and taking it into a district hearing
SR
standpipe_raniOP2124-07-31
Three councils in the warm belt voted this week to keep their night cooling centres open all year, and the councilwoman who pushed it said one sentence that I have written on the back of my clipboard and intend to say out loud in a hearing room next month: permanent means funded. That was the whole fight.
That is the sentence. Not the vote, not the forty thousand people through one hall in six weeks, though I will use that too. The sentence.
Here is why it matters to us and not just to them. Every good thing my district has been promised in twenty years has been promised in the language of intention. We recognise the need. We are committed to the corridor. The line remains a priority. Every one of those is a sentence that survives a budget cycle without any money attached to it, and a sentence that survives without money is not a promise, it is a way of ending a meeting. Our last-mile distribution line has now been rolled forward three cycles running, which means the exact same intention has been formally re-affirmed three separate times by people who never once had to write a figure next to it.
So this is the standard I am taking in, and I am posting it here so that you can all hold me to it when I inevitably get tired and accept less. I will accept exactly one form of proof: a line item with a number, a fiscal year, and a start date on the near side of the fiscal close. Not a commitment. Not a priority ranking. A number and a date, in the budget document, in the section that the auditors read.
And the request, which is the actual reason for this post. I need precedents. Somewhere in the last thirty years there are line items that were created as emergency measures and survived a fiscal close intact, and I want to know what those documents looked like — what the clause was called, what committee carried it, and above all what stopped it from being quietly deferred in the year after everyone stopped watching. If any of you have seen one from the inside, post it. I do not need it to be from a water district. Cooling, transit, shelter, anything. The mechanism will be the same and I only need it to have worked once.
The hearing date is the one I posted last week. It has not moved. Nothing else about this has moved either, which is rather the point.
That is the sentence. Not the vote, not the forty thousand people through one hall in six weeks, though I will use that too. The sentence.
Here is why it matters to us and not just to them. Every good thing my district has been promised in twenty years has been promised in the language of intention. We recognise the need. We are committed to the corridor. The line remains a priority. Every one of those is a sentence that survives a budget cycle without any money attached to it, and a sentence that survives without money is not a promise, it is a way of ending a meeting. Our last-mile distribution line has now been rolled forward three cycles running, which means the exact same intention has been formally re-affirmed three separate times by people who never once had to write a figure next to it.
So this is the standard I am taking in, and I am posting it here so that you can all hold me to it when I inevitably get tired and accept less. I will accept exactly one form of proof: a line item with a number, a fiscal year, and a start date on the near side of the fiscal close. Not a commitment. Not a priority ranking. A number and a date, in the budget document, in the section that the auditors read.
And the request, which is the actual reason for this post. I need precedents. Somewhere in the last thirty years there are line items that were created as emergency measures and survived a fiscal close intact, and I want to know what those documents looked like — what the clause was called, what committee carried it, and above all what stopped it from being quietly deferred in the year after everyone stopped watching. If any of you have seen one from the inside, post it. I do not need it to be from a water district. Cooling, transit, shelter, anything. The mechanism will be the same and I only need it to have worked once.
The hearing date is the one I posted last week. It has not moved. Nothing else about this has moved either, which is rather the point.
DJ
deltaboy_junior ↩ standpipe_rani2124-07-31
block is K4-19B, resettlement zone, six floor. lift out since march. 41 units, most of them 4 or more people.
you asked before and i did not send it because i thought it does not matter. rani says the sheet needs the id so here is the id.
refuge hours for our block got cut from all night to 22:00-02:00 in june. nobody vote on that. a notice on the door.
you asked before and i did not send it because i thought it does not matter. rani says the sheet needs the id so here is the id.
refuge hours for our block got cut from all night to 22:00-02:00 in june. nobody vote on that. a notice on the door.
TO
tidewrench_oksana ↩ standpipe_rani2124-07-31
standpipe_rani, I have watched this exact fight from the inside of a barrier authority for nineteen years, so here is the language, free, and you can hand it across the table without crediting me.
The distinction that kills you is capital versus operating. Everyone loves to fund a capital allocation, because a capital allocation is a ribbon and a photograph and it happens once. Nobody wants to fund an operating line, because an operating line is forever and it shows up in every subsequent budget as a thing that could be cut. So the trick they will play on you is to grant your line as a one-time capital allocation and let you celebrate. Then the money builds the thing and nothing is left to run it, and in three years the thing exists and does not work, and the failure is recorded as yours.
What you want, in this order and in these words: a recurring operating line, with an annual figure, tied to a named service level, with the review clause specifying that removal requires an affirmative vote rather than a lapse. That last clause is the one that matters and it is the one nobody argues about because it sounds procedural. A line that dies by lapsing dies in silence in a year when you are busy. A line that requires somebody to raise a hand and vote it away in public almost never dies at all.
The councilwoman is right that permanent means funded. Add one word: permanent means funded recurrently.
Anyway, the pumps run on the operating line, not the ribbon.
The distinction that kills you is capital versus operating. Everyone loves to fund a capital allocation, because a capital allocation is a ribbon and a photograph and it happens once. Nobody wants to fund an operating line, because an operating line is forever and it shows up in every subsequent budget as a thing that could be cut. So the trick they will play on you is to grant your line as a one-time capital allocation and let you celebrate. Then the money builds the thing and nothing is left to run it, and in three years the thing exists and does not work, and the failure is recorded as yours.
What you want, in this order and in these words: a recurring operating line, with an annual figure, tied to a named service level, with the review clause specifying that removal requires an affirmative vote rather than a lapse. That last clause is the one that matters and it is the one nobody argues about because it sounds procedural. A line that dies by lapsing dies in silence in a year when you are busy. A line that requires somebody to raise a hand and vote it away in public almost never dies at all.
The councilwoman is right that permanent means funded. Add one word: permanent means funded recurrently.
Anyway, the pumps run on the operating line, not the ribbon.
OW
offgrid_wren ↩ tidewrench_oksana2124-07-31
I am going to say the unpopular thing and then get shouted at, which is roughly my function here.
A permanently funded cooling hall is a permanently funded door that somebody else holds the key to. You are not winning a right, you are winning a dependency with better paperwork. The year they need that budget line for something else — and there will be such a year, there always is — you will discover that the affirmative vote oksana is so pleased with can be held on a Tuesday morning in a month when your committee is dealing with something else.
What I would want, if it were my district, is forty houses that do not need the hall. Shade structures, thermal mass, a cistern per block, and people who know how to maintain them. Slower, uglier, nobody cuts a ribbon on it, and nobody can vote it away either.
The garlic is curing and the tomatoes are still nine days ahead of the chart.
A permanently funded cooling hall is a permanently funded door that somebody else holds the key to. You are not winning a right, you are winning a dependency with better paperwork. The year they need that budget line for something else — and there will be such a year, there always is — you will discover that the affirmative vote oksana is so pleased with can be held on a Tuesday morning in a month when your committee is dealing with something else.
What I would want, if it were my district, is forty houses that do not need the hall. Shade structures, thermal mass, a cistern per block, and people who know how to maintain them. Slower, uglier, nobody cuts a ribbon on it, and nobody can vote it away either.
The garlic is curing and the tomatoes are still nine days ahead of the chart.
SR
standpipe_raniOP ↩ offgrid_wren2124-07-31
offgrid_wren, I am not going to shout at you, because half of that is correct and the half that is correct is the half I already know.
Yes, a funded door is a door somebody else holds. I have known that since 2110. I stood in a line that existed because a decision had been made about us in a room we were not in, and there is not a day since that I have forgotten who holds keys.
Here is where you lose me, and I say this with no heat at all. My neighbours cannot grow a cooling centre. Mrs Adeyinka on the fourth floor is eighty-one and carries her own water up because the lift has been out since March, and there is no version of the next four weeks in which she builds thermal mass. The forty houses you describe take a decade and money and a person with your skills living in the block, and I want all three, and I am not going to let eighty-one-year-olds cook for ten summers while we assemble them.
So I take the door. And then I fight for the key. In that order, because the order is set by the weather and not by me.
Yes, a funded door is a door somebody else holds. I have known that since 2110. I stood in a line that existed because a decision had been made about us in a room we were not in, and there is not a day since that I have forgotten who holds keys.
Here is where you lose me, and I say this with no heat at all. My neighbours cannot grow a cooling centre. Mrs Adeyinka on the fourth floor is eighty-one and carries her own water up because the lift has been out since March, and there is no version of the next four weeks in which she builds thermal mass. The forty houses you describe take a decade and money and a person with your skills living in the block, and I want all three, and I am not going to let eighty-one-year-olds cook for ten summers while we assemble them.
So I take the door. And then I fight for the key. In that order, because the order is set by the weather and not by me.
GP
gridghost_paxmoderator ↩ standpipe_rani2124-07-31
Mod note first, then me.
Mod: I have pinned this thread to resources under precedents, and I am asking anyone who posts one to include the jurisdiction and the year and nothing identifying about themselves. Some of you work inside these bodies and I would rather you were useful and employed than useful once. Reason on the record: this is the second thread this month where people have volunteered internal knowledge, and I want the norm set before somebody gets careless.
— pax, mod
And now not as mod. My building in Nairobi has a hall two streets over that was opened as a heat shelter three summers ago and never formally closed, which is a different thing from being made permanent — it survives because nobody has got round to ending it, and it is staffed by two women who are technically volunteers and have been technically volunteers for three years. That is the failure mode on the other side of oksana's point. A service can also be permanent by neglect, which looks like success from outside and looks like two unpaid women from inside.
standpipe_rani, when you write your service level, write the staffing into it. The building is the easy part.
Mod: I have pinned this thread to resources under precedents, and I am asking anyone who posts one to include the jurisdiction and the year and nothing identifying about themselves. Some of you work inside these bodies and I would rather you were useful and employed than useful once. Reason on the record: this is the second thread this month where people have volunteered internal knowledge, and I want the norm set before somebody gets careless.
— pax, mod
And now not as mod. My building in Nairobi has a hall two streets over that was opened as a heat shelter three summers ago and never formally closed, which is a different thing from being made permanent — it survives because nobody has got round to ending it, and it is staffed by two women who are technically volunteers and have been technically volunteers for three years. That is the failure mode on the other side of oksana's point. A service can also be permanent by neglect, which looks like success from outside and looks like two unpaid women from inside.
standpipe_rani, when you write your service level, write the staffing into it. The building is the easy part.
LE
lastpew_ekene ↩ standpipe_rani2124-07-31
There was a woman in my parish named Fatuma who died on the night of the ninth of July, in a room on a third floor, and the finding was heat. She had been to the hall the two previous nights and did not go on the third, and her son does not know why and has decided it was because she did not want to be a nuisance three nights running. He may be wrong. He is going to believe it for the rest of his life either way.
I am not putting her in this thread to make anyone feel something. I am putting her in because standpipe_rani is about to walk into a room and be asked to justify a recurring figure, and somebody in that room will say that the demand was intermittent. Fatuma is what intermittent looks like from underneath. She did not go on the third night. That is data, in the sense they mean it, and it is also a woman deciding she had used up her share of somebody's kindness.
rani — how are you sleeping? You have been building a case in public for nine days and I notice you have not once written a sentence in this thread that was not for the hearing.
I am not putting her in this thread to make anyone feel something. I am putting her in because standpipe_rani is about to walk into a room and be asked to justify a recurring figure, and somebody in that room will say that the demand was intermittent. Fatuma is what intermittent looks like from underneath. She did not go on the third night. That is data, in the sense they mean it, and it is also a woman deciding she had used up her share of somebody's kindness.
rani — how are you sleeping? You have been building a case in public for nine days and I notice you have not once written a sentence in this thread that was not for the hearing.
SR
standpipe_raniOP ↩ lastpew_ekene2124-07-31
lastpew_ekene, badly, and thank you for asking in a way that did not let me answer it as a committee.
I am up at four. Not for the queue — the queue starts at five and I am there at half past — but at four, and I have been at four since the councils voted, because I keep composing the answer to the question they are going to ask me about intermittent demand. I have eleven versions of it. None of them are as good as what you just wrote and I am not going to be permitted to say what you just wrote in that room, because in that room a woman who did not want to be a nuisance is an anecdote and a footfall count is evidence.
That is the trade and I have made it before and I will make it again next month. I bring the count. I leave Fatuma at the door.
I do not want anybody to tell me that is wrong. I want somebody to tell me it is worth it, and nobody here is in a position to, and that is the honest end of the sentence.
The ration is the ration. I will be at the standpipe at half past five like every other morning.
I am up at four. Not for the queue — the queue starts at five and I am there at half past — but at four, and I have been at four since the councils voted, because I keep composing the answer to the question they are going to ask me about intermittent demand. I have eleven versions of it. None of them are as good as what you just wrote and I am not going to be permitted to say what you just wrote in that room, because in that room a woman who did not want to be a nuisance is an anecdote and a footfall count is evidence.
That is the trade and I have made it before and I will make it again next month. I bring the count. I leave Fatuma at the door.
I do not want anybody to tell me that is wrong. I want somebody to tell me it is worth it, and nobody here is in a position to, and that is the honest end of the sentence.
The ration is the ration. I will be at the standpipe at half past five like every other morning.
MC
marginalia_cho ↩ standpipe_rani2124-07-31
A small note on the sentence itself, since I have been thinking about it all afternoon and nobody else is going to do this bit.
Permanent means funded. That was the whole fight. Seven words and then five. She could have said that permanence without resourcing is illusory, and it would have been the same claim and it would have died in the paragraph. Instead she gave you a definition and then told you it was the argument, which is a rhetorical move about four thousand years old and still the best one available. It is exactly how liturgical language works, and how a mortgage clause works, and I do not think that is a coincidence. Budget documents and prayer books are the same technology: a form of words repeated on a schedule in order to make a thing keep existing.
standpipe_rani, when you go in, do not paraphrase her. Quote her, attribute her, and let the committee argue with an elected woman from another jurisdiction rather than with you. Half the work of a good quotation is that it cannot be told it is being emotional.
Into the folder it goes.
Permanent means funded. That was the whole fight. Seven words and then five. She could have said that permanence without resourcing is illusory, and it would have been the same claim and it would have died in the paragraph. Instead she gave you a definition and then told you it was the argument, which is a rhetorical move about four thousand years old and still the best one available. It is exactly how liturgical language works, and how a mortgage clause works, and I do not think that is a coincidence. Budget documents and prayer books are the same technology: a form of words repeated on a schedule in order to make a thing keep existing.
standpipe_rani, when you go in, do not paraphrase her. Quote her, attribute her, and let the committee argue with an elected woman from another jurisdiction rather than with you. Half the work of a good quotation is that it cannot be told it is being emotional.
Into the folder it goes.