Opinions: Cutting hope from the budget

 by Rachel Branch
 published on Friday, March 28, 2008

This'll be my first opinion after three weeks of not writing, and I know many of my avid readers, or the more likely kind who skim over it because it's by the political cartoon, are probably expecting a witty opinion about the field I have the most knowledge in — entertainment.

I'm sorry to disappoint, but there is one particular subject that has been bothering me these past couple weeks and that is Phoenix's huge cuts in the budget.

Typically, I wouldn't care about the budget cuts or anything like it, but there is one particular thing that is losing funding that hit close to home — parks and recreation.

As a volunteer for a community center in Phoenix, budget cuts have become a topic of interest. Because of the recent changes in finance for the Valley city, the community center known as Stardust House, which was built in a neighborhood of Habitat for Humanity homes, will be closing.

I am the student coordinator of a program called Barrett Buddies, a program that pairs up honors college students with children from the Stardust House in a mentoring Big Brothers/Big Sisters kind of way.

This program was to enable these lower income children to receive encouragement and to realize that college is an actual possibility. But now with the Stardust House's closing, these kids will be left to negative influences that surround them.

I will not presume to understand budgets or why funding must be cut from parks and recreation programs throughout Phoenix, but I am curious to know why the children, our supposed future, are the ones that have to suffer instead of other parts of the city's financial plan.

Without these programs, the children will have nothing to draw them away from crime, no one to help them finish their homework or tutor them where they are struggling, and definitely no one to make college an ever-present thought in their mind.

The only way to break the cycle of poverty and crime is to help the future generations with education and encouragement. I know that if it weren't for the positive influences in my life as a child, I would never have gotten as far as I did, and I had hoped to be a positive influence on the life of a child who truly needs it.

It saddens me to think about the other cities in the Valley that aren't struggling and haven't had to make any cuts to any programs. Scottsdale is working on updating its downtown and southern areas, and Tempe keeps adding multimillion-dollar condos and adding cameras to catch as many speeders as possible. Though yes, I know that Mesa suffered severe losses to its police force because of budget cuts and that Phoenix isn't the only one losing parks and recreation funding, it still stings.

More specifically, what stings is knowing that six-year-old Erick, whose mother comes from Mexico and speaks no English, will no longer have anyone to help him with his alphabet or with his annunciation of words.

What's worse, while Erick will struggle along in life to get a job as something more than just minimum wage, Paris Hilton will spend a couple million on her next birthday party.

Rachel can be reached by e-mail at: rachel.m.branch@asu.edu.