The March 27 morning meeting gave approximately 100 residents the chance to pare down the Cupertino city budget, but with the same consequences that a round of Monopoly has on a player's wallet. The Balance or Bust board game, crafted by Parks and Recreation Director Therese Smith, took tables of participants through a full fiscal year with the goal of cutting $2 million from the budget.

After an hour and a half of deliberating, the verdict was unanimous: "We understand why the city council meets until the wee hours of the morning," said one group.

Mayor Sandy James introduced the event by explaining that the organizers wanted to see what residents thought about the problems that plague the city council and staff every day. "I'm not going to call it a game. It's much too serious," she said. James and her fellow city council members circulated among the tables, observing how their constituents would do their jobs.

Armed with slides detailing the city's current financial situation, each table chose a mayor and city clerk. Nicôl Lea, board member of the Cupertino Library Foundation, served as mayor at her table, which drew an earthquake costing $1.5 million from a pile of black cards ominously marked with lightning bolts.

The debate soon turned to dipping into the "city's" $1 million emergency fund, as well as finding ways to recoup the lost money. Cheers arose around the table when chance brought a new hotel into town, with $1 million coming along with it. "How tall is that hotel?" joked Rusty Britt.

Members at Lea's table found it easy to either keep or table items important to law enforcement and public works, even tangentially. "If you reduce park maintenance, that's encouraging crime," said Thelma Epstein. At the end of the fiscal year, a number of items in those two realms that had been tabled had to be revisited to make the $2 million goal, such as student resource officers officers and traffic-signal upgrades.

"We still want to keep infrastructure in place, but we also need to find more creative solutions, like reducing departments by a percentage or starting library user fees," Lea said.

Tensions amicably rose with the discussion of keeping Fourth of July activities in the morning but cutting the fireworks display. Some suggested having a corporation sponsor the display, but the crux of the issue came down to the lack of a location to show fireworks. "We want to bring it back. It's an important community activity, but we don't have the money," Epstein argued. For a savings of $60,000, the table chose to cut the display.

Each table presented its results upon reconvening as a group, all agreeing that the process was painful. In her presentation, Lea said the game should be played every year. John Shea, a student with Leadership Cupertino and a local leader for the state employees union, disagreed with the idea of user fees, but said he learned a lot from the experience of negotiating with those at his table. "I have a lot of respect for the decisions the city council has to make," he said. "It was democracy in action, but we learned that we could discuss these things without being hurtful."

Though many tables varied with their priorities--some struggling with the idea of canceling Cupertino's public access channel, others immediately cutting it--the main consensus was that law enforcement and public works took priority over cultural and communication programs. This caused one mayor to issue a few words of caution: "At some point, it's not worth living here any more."

Members of the city council wrapped up the event by sharing some of the insights they learned, saying that they were grateful to see community members understanding the ideological obstructions that come with cutting budgets.

"This was great at reminding us that we don't know any more than you do," City Councilman Richard Lowenthal said. "But while communication seems so soft and easy to cut, my biggest regret is that we didn't communicate that those buildings [at the corner of Stevens Creek and De Anza boulevards] would be as big as they are."

"I saw many of you pulling hairs," added City Councilwoman Kris Wang. "I was really seeing the passion, the sincerity and the seriousness of this community."

Anyone interested in donating money to help pay for the annual fireworks display on the Fourth of July can send a contribution to: Fireworks, City of Cupertino, 10300 Torre Ave., Cupertino, CA 95014-3255.

For more information, call Marie Preston at 408.777.3267.