PWO Budget Reconfiguration
The Park’s Weather Office has launched a formal complaint against The Finance Office after the release, last week, of its Expense Projections for 2012.
In a statement released this morning, the PWO charged that “a recent history of underfunding of weather in The Park has resulted in reduced crop sizes, diminished coats, domicile destruction and even, perhaps, a rise in Animal illnesses.”
While some of the charges might be difficult to prove, the PWO has authority on its side when it comes to reduced crop sizes and food shortages.
“The past few years have seen the worst harvests in The Park,” says A.P. Civet, of the Society of Concerned Park Cultivators, Planters, Growers, and Farmers (SCPCPGF). “Not coincidentally, these were the years of cutbacks, when funding for weather purchases was at its lowest. It may seem fine to those [Animals] in the Finance Office to replace rain with wind and to buy dull days by the pack, but you can’t grow food like that,” he said.
The Park Weather Officers don’t need convincing. They have put together a counter-proposal, which they are hoping the Archons will review and send to the Finance Office for implementation.
“At the present time,” said a spokesAnimal for the Weather Office, “the weather budget comes out of the 11 per cent of the budget that is allocated for groundskeeping and water maintenance. A measly 15% of that 11% total has been used for weather purchases. We are proposing to more than double that amount to 35%. We feel that figure will give us the leverage we need to buy the kind of weather that will result in abundant harvests. The Park’s population is growing at an alarming rate and our [food] requirements are growing along with that. This is no time to be cutting back and risking more shortages,” the spokesAnimal said.
