At first I thought categories were a good idea for the simple fact that it would make voting easier. With the recent changeover from a single big-budget Public Awareness fund to individual items, the number of individual proposals that a MN voter must examine is certainly increasing. Any sort of "category" field would make the voting experience faster. Like if someone is gung-ho about "marketing" he would immediately vote for anything in that category.
But the problem with that is not only is the voter being ignorant, a disingenuous proposal creator could capitalize on that ignorance by slapping on a "marketing" category to something that will not promote Dash at all, and ultimately just line his pockets.
In this case, the category is Core versus Community, which is a little different, since it is a category of actual people, which is not an arbitrary categorization like my example above. Having the Core category means that MN voters can vote more easily based on the faith they have in the current Core team members. But taking a step back, it is no different from voting for an individual proposal owner with his own reputation at stake. If the Core team starts to lose the confidence of Dash's majority investors, then they will be voted down eventually and a new "Core" in the community side will emerge, like was stated above.
Ideally, proposals should stand on their merits and not their titles. The masternode voters should be the smartest, most informed, and best able to decide the future of Dash, because they hold the majority of it. Keep in mind that that decision currently could very well be simply "whatever Evan or Core thinks is best" in the mind of a MN operator. That certainly does not mean the MN is not doing any deciding, though! He is putting his money where his trust and faith in execution is. We are all ultimately voting for people--not things--because only people can cause things to happen.
So I think the real question is whether to have a "Core" of trusted individuals versus independently-trusted individuals. As long was we continue to have a Core Team, it probably should be a budget category, IMO. Otherwise, what's the point of having a team if you can't trust that entity with some degree of autonomy?