Nearly every contentious debate in Northampton politics comes down to a singular issue: how much money? How much for schools, how much for roads, for police, for the unhoused? It’s a necessary argument but it quietly assumes that a dollar spent is a dollar delivered, and it skips the question that should accompany it: What are we actually getting for the money, and how can we improve return on investment? Doing so and advocating for adequate funding are not opposing goals. They are the same project. Yet outcomes are too often missing from the conversation.

Inefficiency, stagnation, and wasted money — long a trope of the political right — is in fact a massive problem that plagues government and transcends ideology. And it’s corrosive: only about one in five Americans believes government programs are well run, according to Pew Research, and that erosion of trust makes it harder to fund the very services residents depend on. In a 2024 New York Times op-ed, progressive writer/podcaster Ezra Klein argued that “Democrats are too quick to defend [institutions] — and to fortify them, even when they don’t work. The Democrats are often committed to the institution in name, to the process as it exists — as opposed to the outcomes the institution is supposed to deliver.”

In the face of perennial, structural limits to revenue, our leaders — at the city, state, and federal level — must do what is necessary to improve outcomes and return on investment. This means focusing more on the quality and quantity of services rendered across departments, not just how much money goes in and how many people are hired. It means embracing more techniques used effectively in the private sector and in well-run governments alike — “Key Performance Indicators” that define the mission, the deliverables required to achieve it, and the timeline against which results are measured. This isn’t abstract theory. When Washington state empowered employees to make their workflows more efficient, and held programs to measurable targets, a Harvard Kennedy School case study documented a return of roughly $4.50 in value for every $1 invested and $33 million in savings — money that stayed in service of residents rather than overhead.

To do that here requires elected leaders and department heads who are curious, ambitious, and aggressively seek out best practices in other cities and states. Where are communities using innovative, cost-effective approaches to build and maintain roads and sidewalks? To better serve students and improve outcomes in schools? To meet the growing crisis of the unhoused? To revitalize downtowns? And it means breaking the status quo by disrupting, and sometimes upsetting, those in government who have grown complacent, bureaucratic, and entrenched in the “that’s just how it’s always been done” mindset. In some cases it must include challenging unions when they actively oppose changes that would dramatically improve staff performance and outcomes. Yes, you can work to improve unions while simultaneously supporting them as crucial institutions.

This topic is relevant to the current search for a new Department of Public Works director in Northampton. As the longtime director Donna LaScaleia steps down, are we looking for someone exceptional who emphasizes using every tax dollar as a unit of measurable output? Someone who asks not only “can we afford to pave this street?” but “are we getting the most, per dollar, of any city our size?” Can we find a leader who thinks outside the box and is genuinely excited to find and adopt best practices? We spend over $4 million a year from the general fund on the DPW, and there’s a growing list of ways other cities are squeezing more out of their limited budgets. Baltimore’s CitiStat program, a Harvard-award-winning model being used by many cities, set hard targets like filling every pothole within 48 hours, and used aggressive, data-driven follow-up to cut city overtime by roughly 40 percent. Places like Cumberland, Maryland and Mesa County, Colorado have swapped complaint-driven, “worst-first” road repair for data systems that put the right treatment on the right street at the right time, stretching paving dollars. We can and must do the same.

As budgets tighten, costs explode, and Proposition 2½ constrains revenue, Northampton has a choice. We can keep fighting the same one-dimensional fight over how much. Or we can choose to also innovate, demand more from every dollar, and become a model for effective and efficient municipal governance.

Josh Silver lives in Florence.