The following appeared in a memo from a budget planner for the city of Grandview.
"Our citizens are well aware of the fact that while the Grandview Symphony Orchestra was struggling to succeed, our city government promised annual funding to help support its programs. Last year, however, private contributions to the symphony increased by 200 percent, and attendance at the symphony's concerts-in-the-park series doubled. The symphony has also announced an increase in ticket prices for next year. Such developments indicate that the symphony can now succeed without funding from city government and we can eliminate that expense from next year's budget. Therefore, we recommend that the city of Grandview eliminate its funding for the Grandview Symphony from next year's budget. By doing so, we can prevent a city budget deficit without threatening the success of the symphony."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The budget planner desires to avoid a budget deficit to the city by ending the city’s financial support of the symphony. While budget deficits are a legitimate concern, the planner’s line of reasoning has several glaring deficiencies. The planner’s premise that the symphony is no longer in a precarious financial situation leads him or her into some faulty assumptions regarding the continuing fruitfulness of private contributions and ticket revenue. The planner needs to further investigate the symphony’s financial picture in order to strengthen the argument.
The primary fault with the planner’s implications is his or her basing all decisions on the premise that the symphony’s budget is no longer problematic. There is simply not enough evidence given to support the idea that the symphony’s budget is rock solid. The city budget planner does not mention any evidence from the symphony’s budget that would indicate its solvency. In fact, the aforementioned increase in ticket price indicates the opposite—perhaps the symphony needs to generate more revenue, and is attempting to do this through ticket sales.
The secondary fault lies with the unwarranted assumption that the recent revenue will continue. No information is given about the private contributions—are these one-time gifts, or annual pledges? Not enough information is available about the private contributions to make a determination. The increased ticket price is a conundrum. Will the increase in price generate more revenue from loyal symphony attendees? Or will the higher price put enjoyment of the arts out of reach of all but the most affluent city residents? Hopefully the symphony has done its own due diligence in this regard, but the city planner certainly hasn’t. He or she offers no information regarding forecasted private contributions or ticket price revenue. While certainly convenient arguments, the planner has not supported the implication that revenue will continue.
The planner may have a point—when budgets are tight, nonessentials such as the fine arts need to be cut. However, he makes a poor case for abandoning funding of the symphony. His assertion is that the symphony has enough other income sources. Unfortunately, there is not enough evidence given to show that private donations and ticket sales will keep the symphony afloat. We don’t know if the private donations are ongoing or one-time, and it is too soon to tell if the increased ticket prices will provide the revenue needed to make up the symphony’s deficit if they continue to contribute. The budget planner needs make a stronger case by gathering data regarding income, expenses, and financial reserves for the symphony in order to see if they can be self-sustaining before making the argument that the city can cease funding based on the symphony’s newfound financial solvency.
The budget planner has a tough call to make. Such decisions are more accepted by the public if a strong case can be made
for the outcome. However, this budget planner needs to delve into the issue more deeply to find out the true impact on the symphony before cutting them from the city budget. Evidence of significant ongoing private contributions, as well as preliminary ticket sale data, would buttress support for the planner’s decision to cut funding.
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Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 1, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...in order to strengthen the argument. The primary fault with the planner's i...
^^^
Line 3, column 576, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...mpting to do this through ticket sales. The secondary fault lies with the unwarr...
^^^^^
Line 9, column 122, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... the public if a strong case can be made for the outcome. However, this budget p...
^^^
Line 10, column 344, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...planner's decision to cut funding.
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, however, if, may, regarding, second, so, then, well, while, in fact, such as, as well as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 28.0 28.8173652695 97% => OK
Preposition: 57.0 55.5748502994 103% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2864.0 2260.96107784 127% => OK
No of words: 526.0 441.139720559 119% => OK
Chars per words: 5.44486692015 5.12650576532 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.78901763229 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.21975111844 2.78398813304 116% => OK
Unique words: 239.0 204.123752495 117% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.454372623574 0.468620217663 97% => OK
syllable_count: 900.9 705.55239521 128% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Interrogative: 0.0 0.471057884232 0% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 6.0 1.67365269461 358% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 27.0 19.7664670659 137% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 55.7549754188 57.8364921388 96% => OK
Chars per sentence: 106.074074074 119.503703932 89% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.4814814815 23.324526521 84% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.44444444444 5.70786347227 60% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 13.0 6.88822355289 189% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.235499289876 0.218282227539 108% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0743080564642 0.0743258471296 100% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0592632322079 0.0701772020484 84% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.142570704516 0.128457276422 111% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0569775561427 0.0628817314937 91% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.9 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 43.73 48.3550499002 90% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.27 12.5979740519 113% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.39 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 127.0 98.500998004 129% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.