Show up before the smoke starts

Moore County’s elected neighbors would rather hear hard questions now than angry complaints after the budget is set

#Opinion • 9:04 p.m. April 21, 2026

Every year, budget season tells the same story.

Everybody has an opinion when the room gets hot.

Once the numbers get tight, once the tradeoffs start to sting, once word gets around that somebody may not like what is coming, the experts appear. The critics get loud. The Facebook crowd suddenly shows up in the comment section.

That part is easy.

What is hard is being in the room before the smoke starts. What is hard is trying to make a county budget work in the real world, where needs keep coming, money does not, and every dollar moved helps one thing while squeezing another.

That is the work in front of Moore County’s budget committee, the mayor, and Metro Council as they work through the 2026-27 budget.

The next committee meeting is set for 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 28, at the American Legion, 119 Booneville Hwy. in Lynchburg. If the public wants to matter in this process, that is when it matters most.

Not after the vote. Not after the panic. Not after the Facebook post. Not after people discover the issue five minutes before acting like they have been following it all along.

Before.

Because when June gets here, people will feel this budget in their tax bill, their roads, their schools, their services, and the kind of county government they actually live with.

It is our money. Not the government’s money. Not somebody else’s money. ... Ours.

The people doing the work

That is why this process deserves more public attention than it usually gets. It is also why the people doing this work deserve more credit than they usually get.

Let’s say that plainly.

The mayor, Metro Council members, and department heads are the ones in the room trying to make the numbers hold. Year after year, no matter who sits in those seats, it is still our elected neighbors who have to hear the requests, study the shortfalls, weigh the priorities, and somehow make the whole thing hang together.

That is not glamorous work. It rarely gets applause. Most of the time, it gets second-guessed by people who have never had to make a hard budget call with their own name on it.

But it matters. And it deserves respect.

Giving officials credit is not the same thing as giving them a pass. They should be questioned. Their decisions should be tested. That comes with the job. What is not serious is ignoring the process while it unfolds in public, then barging in late and acting as if nobody gave you a chance to speak.

Ask now, not later

And here is the other thing people ought to remember: Our local officials are not hard to find. They have phones. They answer them. And they would rather hear a hard question now than an angry complaint three months from now.

That is how this is supposed to work.

Anybody can take shots after the fact. Anybody can jump behind a keyboard once the choices have narrowed, throw out a snarky line, collect a few amens, and call that civic engagement.

It is not. Real community input comes before the crisis, not in the middle of it.

That is when questions can still sharpen the discussion. That is when concerns can still shape the outcome. That is when elected officials can still hear from the people they represent before the lines harden and the options narrow.

After that, a lot of it is just noise. And Moore County does not need more noise. It needs more people in the room before the vote.

What the budget really touches

The budget is not background noise, either. It is one of the clearest pictures you will get all year of what county government plans to protect, what it is willing to delay, what it will fund, and what will have to wait. Strip away the spreadsheets and line items, and that is what a budget is: priorities with numbers attached.

It touches schools. Roads. Emergency services. Equipment. Employees. Maintenance. Debt. Public safety. The ordinary, unglamorous parts of county life that people notice fast when they stop working.

In other words, the things people say they care about most.

So if residents care about those things – and they do – then they ought to care about the process that pays for them before it's over.

That does not mean every citizen has to become a budget expert. It does not mean everybody has to speak at a meeting. But it does mean paying attention, while attention can still do some good. It means listening before shouting. It means showing up before complaining that nobody listened.

Public business means the public

Small counties work best when people remember that public business really is public business.

That means more than demanding transparency. It means practicing citizenship early enough to matter. It means understanding that if you want a better result in June, you probably need to care in April.

And it means giving the mayor and council the basic fairness of hearing from the public while they are still doing the work, not just after the room gets hot.

So yes, ask hard questions. Demand clarity. Stay engaged. Watch the numbers. Speak up.

Call. Ask. Show up.

But do it while it can still make a difference. And while you are at it, remember who is in the room making the hard calls.

Our elected neighbors are the ones stuck making these choices. They deserve scrutiny. They also deserve better than a public that mistakes late outrage for showing up.

Because by June, the budget that passes will say exactly what Moore County decided to do with our money.

And if we only decide to care once the decisions are made, then we do not get to act like we were shut out.

We were not shut out.

We just did not show up.