More than a balanced budget?

Why is the Daily Record wasting front page space on the Bella Vista Property Owners Association, an organization that made itself nearly irrelevant in its own boundaries, let alone in Benton County, but still has not comes to terms with it. And for what? Well, it's the ultra-exciting demand by its members that the budget "break even."

You might wonder, isn't it important for the POA budget to break even? Maybe, but not like you might think. On a national scale, when such a phenomenon is called a balanced budget, making the expenses match revenue can be the difference between a golden age and years of escalating debt passed on for at least three generations. State law, however, dictates that counties and municipalities operate under a balanced budget. There is an allowance for bonds, but those are different than loans in that the process is more akin to buying and selling stocks than taking out a loan, although it does result in the city receiving a lump sum up front and repaying it with interest.
But effectively, every budget is balanced if no money is borrowed. If the POA wants a balanced budget, it just must not borrow money. When the cash runs out, you stop spending. That's what most of us do in our own homes.
But that still brings us back to the initial question. Why is the POA relevant to Benton County, and why is it relevant to the Daily Record? I understand that those who are members of the POA would want this information, but ever since the city incorporated, the POA has been unable to give up its superiority complex, and those at the newspaper have gone along with it. News about the POA routinely rates the front page, but issues in Bella Vista government get buried inside. But, then again, this is the same newspaper that merged four independent publications into one cookie-cutter paper, told readers through four identical editorials that each paper would maintain an independent voice and then criticized bloggers with an opposing viewpoint of encouraging groupthink. This is certainly an organization with a solid sense of perspective.
Happy reading.