Speaking English: Balanced Budget

balanced budget: noun. A budget is balanced when current expenditures are equal to receipts
-- Dictionary.com

balanced budget: Government budget where the current expenditure equals current revenue.
-- BusinessDictionary.com

balanced budget: A budget for which expenditures are equal to income. Sometimes a budget for which expenditures are less than income is also considered balanced.
-- InvestorWords.com

There you have it. A general-purpose dictionary, a business dictionary and an investment dictionary all agree. So, when I looked at Richardson's proposed 2011-2012 budget, saw that expenditures ($188.6 million) exceeded revenues ($186.9 million), and pronounced it "not balanced," it seemed to be an easy call for me. I couldn't understand why the city insisted the budget was balanced. I did have my theories:

"Maybe there's a state legal requirement that city budgets be balanced, meaning there's a legal definition of what "balanced" means that doesn't exactly match the dictionary definition. As long as the city meets the legal definition, their budget is in (legal) balance, even if the numbers show a teensy-tiny (dictionary) deficit."

After the jump, Bill McCalpin fleshes out that theory.

Wildcats 34, Skeeters 27

From 2011 Football

On a hot summer night, the average lifespan of a mosquito is one to two hours. The Skeeters of Mesquite High School lasted that long and more, persistent pests until the end. The Lake Highlands Wildcats eventually prevailed 34-27 in the season opener for both schools at Wildcat-Ram Stadium.

The bands and color guards and drill teams and cheerleaders and everything else that goes into making high school football the best value in Friday night entertainment are also off to a good start. It promises to be a great season.

More photos from this game and all of the 2011 season can be found here.

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In other Friday night games involving RISD schools, JJ Pearce beat Lake Dallas 36-32 (w00t) and Frisco Centennial beat Richardson 51-7 (ouch). Earlier, on Thursday night, Berkner beat South Garland 29-23.

The Return of High School Football

From 2011 Football

Still hotter than blazes. But it's late August. You know what that means. High school football returns. Thursday night, at Garland's Homer B. Johnson Stadium, the Berkner Rams came from behind to beat the South Garland Colonels 29-23. The go ahead touchdown for the Rams came with five minutes left in the game, then the defense did its part with a pass interception on the 5 yard line with a minute to play to nail down the win. It's a great time to be a Ram!

More photos from the game can be found here.

Fear of Commitment in 27 Pages

The City of Richardson's Statement of Goals has always been a grab bag. Part vision and mission statement, part job description for city government, part wish list, part laundry list, it's a jumble of goals, priorities and action items. Its length is indicative of its problems. This year, after several multiple hour sessions, the City Council managed to whittle it down from 28 pages to, let's count 'em, 1, 2, 3, ..., 27 pages.

After the jump, some random examples of what's wrong with the current draft of the City of Richardson's Statement of Goals.

Counting the Holes, Not the Trees

How do you count 50,000 trees? How do you count 3,000,000? Recently, I blogged about Richardson's "Tree the Town" program (goal: plant 50,000 trees) and North Texas's "Tree North Texas" program (goal: plant 3,000,000 trees) and pondered the challenge of counting all those trees.

Since then, I've learned a thing or two from readers (wonderful readers!) that turns my thinking completely upside down. I experienced an "ah ha!" moment. You know, when the light bulb clicks on over your head (the new cool squiggly kind, not the old Easy-Bake Oven heat source kind). I was thinking about the problem of counting trees in the exact opposite way I should have been. The experience reminded me of a chapter in the history of science:

"Around 1752, Benjamin Franklin developed his theory on the flow of electricity. Franklin believed that electricity flows like a fluid, and this fluid flows from areas of positive charge to areas of negative charge. It would be over 100 years before it was understood that current flow was actually the movement of charged particles.

"By the time science understood that electric current was the movement of negatively charged electrons, it was too late to change the standards, the textbooks, the schematic diagrams, and the generally accepted theory. The direction of current flow was set as opposite to the actual flow of the charge carriers, which we now know flow from areas of negative charge to areas of positive charge."
-- Everything2.com

Today, it's best to think of electric current not as a flow of electrons in one direction, but as a flow of "holes" left behind as electrons move in the opposite direction.

After the jump, why Ben Franklin's mistake is like the challenge of counting trees.