EDITORIAL
City spending should be better centralized

The Harris administration has invited hundreds of neighborhood board and "vision team" participants to a meeting today at which the future of the board and vision team process will be debated.

It's about time.

Today's meeting was prompted by budget shortfalls that have forced the city to reduce the amount of money it can hand out to vision teams. Instead, it proposes redirecting money through neighborhood boards.

Both the long-standing neighborhood board system and the more recent vision team concepts are good ideas. They empower people and offer a way for the grassroots to affect how city money is spent.

But fundamentally, pushing money through either or both organizations tends to Balkanize city budgeting and spending. It makes comprehensive planning that much more difficult.

The fact that the city is asking neighborhood boards to commit their allocation to citywide road projects is evidence of the move back toward more centralized, comprehensive planning.

It makes good sense.