City Economics & Budgets
📋 What it is
A city collects money (taxes, fees) and must choose how to spend it across roads, schools, safety and parks — with trade-offs.
🗣️ Coach says
A city budget is a giant set of choices. Money is limited, so every dollar for parks is a dollar not spent on roads. Understanding trade-offs is how you judge whether a city is spending wisely on what people need most.
🧠 Memory hook
Limited money = trade-offs. Every dollar spent here isn’t spent there.
😂 Giggle
Why was the bridge so good at making friends?
It always made connections!
😲 Whoa!
Big cities run budgets in the billions — New York City’s annual budget is larger than that of many entire countries.
✅ Quick check: Why must a city make trade-offs when it plans its budget?
Say your answer out loud first — then reveal.
Its money is limited, so spending more on one thing (say parks) means less for another (say roads) — you can’t fund everything fully.
Trade-off thinking is essential civic and economic reasoning.
🧪 Try it! (2 minutes)
If you ran your town with a fixed budget, name your top spending priority and what you’d spend less on.