The $657 Municipal Hat Crisis

What is this? The Sin Bin is The Valley Signal’s advice column for people who don’t deserve it. The sin bin is the penalty box, where you go when you’ve screwed up. You write in with the mess you’ve made of your life, or your neighbor’s, and Sully tells you what you already know but you’re too soft to admit. No soft problems. No participation trophies. No closure. Every story has a pylon, the useless person standing there while the play moves around them. If you can’t spot yours, it’s you. Keep it short or get benched, and send it to [email protected].

I recently noticed that the City is spending $657.19 on hats for VictorFest, and I wanted to ask whether that is really a necessary use of taxpayer money.

Victor’s FY27 budget is roughly $9 million, so I realize $657.19 represents a very small portion of total City spending. At the same time, I think residents should still be able to ask whether purchases like promotional hats are necessary and whether that money could be better used elsewhere.

Maybe this is insignificant in the context of the overall budget. But when public money is involved, I think it is reasonable to pay attention even to relatively small expenses and understand what taxpayers are paying for.

— A Concerned Resident

Buddy.

You cannot write the sentence “Maybe this is insignificant in the context of the overall budget” and then proceed anyway.

You found the answer.

It was in your own email.

Using your roughly $9 million budget number, $657.19 is about 0.0073 percent of the annual budget.

That is not seven-tenths of a percent.

It is not seven-hundredths.

It is seven-thousandths of one percent.

If you ran a household on $100,000 a year, the equivalent financial emergency would be spending about $7.30.

Not $730.

Seven bucks.

We are convening the kitchen-table fiscal oversight committee because Dad bought a breakfast burrito.

And look, government spending absolutely deserves scrutiny. That’s the deal. It’s public money. Ask what things cost. Read the bills. Show up. Be annoying. Democracy has survived considerably worse than somebody asking for a receipt.

But proportionality has to enter the building at some point.

Could the city have spent zero dollars on hats?

Sure.

Could they have spent $657.19 on something else?

Also sure.

That’s how spending works. Every dollar ever spent could theoretically have been spent on another thing.

But if your case for municipal fiscal irresponsibility starts with promotional hats costing roughly one fourteen-thousandth of the annual budget, you haven’t uncovered the Pentagon Papers.

You’ve uncovered hats.

And here comes our pylon, standing there holding a calculator:

WHAT ABOUT THE HATS?

The hats, kid?

You live in a small town holding a community festival.

There will be tents. There will be music. There will be food. Somebody will hand somebody a hat with “Victor” printed on it.

This is not exactly Teapot Dome.

The writer even concedes that the expense may be insignificant in the context of the budget.

Correct.

Case closed.

You don’t get extra civic-engagement points for noticing that $657 exists. The question is whether it matters.

If you find a city contract that costs hundreds of thousands more than it should, call me.

If somebody quietly buys themselves a Tahoe with the sewer fund, absolutely call me.

If Victor somehow develops a municipal hat addiction and we wake up next spring with $400,000 worth of trucker caps stacked to the ceiling of City Hall, I will personally bring the pitchfork.

Until then, you have found $657.19 worth of promotional merchandise inside a roughly $9 million budget.

Congratulations.

That’s the whole scandal.

Sully’s Verdict: If the biggest fiscal emergency you can fit in an email costs $657.19, congratulations to the City on the hats.