A Budget Only Works if You Follow It

We received two pieces of disturbing financial news at last week’s executive meeting.

The first was that the construction of the soccer centre is over budget. Those who suggested last summer that funds donated over the initial target amount should be kept in reserve for such an eventuality now have "I told you so" rights over those who decided that it was far better to add more features to this facility. And, of course, we don’t know yet how much it will cost to run the place. The result of this – an additional two years of tax payers’ contributions just to pay for construction, until 2015 rather than the original 2013 end date.

Another interesting question about the soccer centre levy: I had a look at my tax notice to see what my donation to the centre will be this year. It went up, I assumed because of reassessment, but then I noticed that the mill rate for that part of my taxes was higher than it was last year; the other mill rates for Municipal Residential and Public School Residential went down. I asked administration why this was, and was told that they decided to round it off – I’m not sure why, or why they rounded it up, rather than down. It’s another example of how this council seems to want to do things secretly, rather than letting people know up front what is happening.

The second piece of bad news, which is potentially more serious, is that last year’s operating costs were more than $400,000 over budget, and administration didn’t bring this to our attention until now. This occurred after a 6% tax increase. This year we have a 0% increase and are now, because of this, effectively in the hole already. Who knows where we’ll be if we continue to spend according to past patterns, including unnecessary items such as gifts for the mayor to give visitors to his office (most recent addition to the gift selection – golf shirts with a $26.95 price tag).

In my opinion, when following a budget, whether for a large entity, such as the city, or a small entity, such as your household, you need to constantly track where the money is going, and when expenditures start to exceed the budget, some adjustment of priorities and reduction of spending needs to happen. If you’re hit with a big increase in your power bill, you’ll likely reduce the money you spend on eating out, for example.

If council had known about this during the year, might we have cut back on everything from new banners to meals for council and committee meetings? If we had known about this shortfall during the budgeting process, would we have given $48,000 to the Golf and Curling Club for their 100th Anniversary? You may remember that, during the final budget meeting, I suggested that we were rushing the process too much, and I was criticized by other members of council for holding things up unnecessarily. In fact, one council member even said that for him, budgeting happened 365 days a year. I’m not sure what goes on in his year-round budgeting, because he appeared to be as surprised as the rest of us.

Instead of taking preventative action, we will deal with this shortfall from last year by depleting our stabilization reserves (after making a first token effort in this year’s budget to replace a small portion of what this council has taken out of these reserves during its term), and we will borrow from an employees’ vested sick leave fund. I have seen no plans for how we will pay that money back, but that will certainly add to future tax burdens.

I’m often asked if I’ve heard of any new contenders for council, and my response is usually "Who would want to take on the job?" Managing a city which has blithely mortgaged a hefty chunk of its future, while increasing its obligations to pay for various facilities that require ever-increasing subsidies, means that whoever ends up on the next city council has inherited one ugly financial mess. To fix that, sadly, will take a lot more than a catchy slogan.

"Let us all be happy and live within our means, even if we have to borrow the money to do it with." – Charles Farrar Browne

Coming Soon to a Radio Near You - A Council Infomercial

Last week's council featured more debate than usual, a refreshing change probably because no one present felt the need to call for the vote before discussion was finished. The topic that took up the most time was the new proposed communications plan, and the part of that which brought up the greatest difference of opinion was the $42,000 to buy time on the local radio chain, for regular interviews with the mayor, city manager, or a designate.

The proposed plan didn't say why paying for something that we currently get for free would be an improvement, since the radio now interviews the mayor after every council meeting, every other Tuesday morning. But the opinion of some members of council was that this would be better, because we could "control the message".

So the plan isn't to provide more information about city council, it's to provide a controlled message about how great we're doing. This, by any definition, would be called propaganda, and shouldn't be something that we spend taxpayers' dollars on.

I'm all for keeping the public informed about what we're doing, preferably before we do it, so that there's the opportunity for input and ideas before final decisions are made. But my repeated suggestions that the city page, which we already are paying for, include information about upcoming committee meetings, as well as council and executive meetings (which the Saskatoon city council does on their page of advertising), have been ignored. Somehow, I don't think that in our controlled message there will be mention made of all the maintenance activities that were left out of the most recent budget, or the reduction of the fiscal stabilization fund from $1.9 million at the end of 2005 to $239,804 at the end of March, 2009 - yes, this current council depleted the fund by more than $1.5 million before it decided to put a small fraction back in this year's budget. But letting people know about that wouldn't be the kind of message that this council wants people to hear.

This is, of course, an election year. What this will do is provide free pre-election coverage for some members of council. It's interesting that councillors get $500 each year as a communications allowance - this is frozen six months before the election, because it wouldn't be right for taxpayers to pay even slightly for a councillor's election expenses. But $42,000 to pay for infomercials is considered okay.

The communications plan (to use the word lightly), doesn't even set any targets, or evaluation criteria. The reasoning behind putting more money into radio spots was that "young people don't read newspapers". I have news for some members of the administration - they don't listen to the radio either. They're on the internet, on Facebook or You Tube. They download what they want to listen to onto their Ipods, and I'll bet listening to someone on council talk about how great this year's banners look won't be something that they would even think about downloading. And we have no idea how to measure the success of this change - unless, of course, it helps some people get re-elected - then they'll no doubt point to major success.

Provide people with unbiased information, before decisions are made, and let them make up their own minds about whether council is doing a good job - don't be trying to control the message, because that sort of tactic tends to backfire.

"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark: the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." - Plato

The Pros and Cons of Conferences

Last Thursday's local paper had an opinion piece from the Vancouver Sun, criticizing the annual meeting of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), currently going on in Whistler, BC. Although it wasn't mentioned related to the piece, 6 members of city council are there right now, at a cost of about $3,500 each. The piece suggested that such meetings are a waste of time and money, largely because the agenda items were outside of civic areas of responsibility, dealing with such things as global warming and international relations. The social aspects of the conference, particularly the main banquet, were also roundly criticized as being a waste of taxpayers' money.

I've been to FCM meetings in the past - what I've found most useful are the smaller sessions, where topics directly related to my work as a councillor have been discussed - water treatment, raising awareness of local tourism opportunities, improving council efficiencies - learning how other communities deal with these issues is very helpful. I've also found touring the host community, both as part of the conference and on my own, to be a source of new information and ideas for things that we could try here. If another community has a solution that works, we don't need to try to reinvent the wheel. Conferences for any profession, including members of council, should first and foremost be seen as an educational opportunity directly related to our work.

I chose not to go to Whistler - I didn't see much on the agenda that I thought would be directly useful to me, and Whistler is a community drastically different from Prince Albert - I didn't think that there would be much to be gained from exploring a relatively new, recreationally focused community to help with Prince Albert's issues of old infrastructure, improving race relations, and dealing with inadequate housing.

This doesn't mean that I haven't been to conferences this year. I went to two, each focusing on an area of priority for my council work. In April I attended the annual meeting of the Canadian Housing Renewal Association in Toronto, as I chair the Housing Committee. This conference provided plenty of opportunity to discuss housing problems and how other communities have tried to solve them, with the bonus of having supper with several of Andrea's siblings and their families, one of whom is a social worker in Toronto. She was able to tell me of her experiences with some of the programs that were discussed at the conference, so I could compare theory to reality.

Then the last week of May I attended the annual meeting of the Canadian Library Association in Montreal. As chair of the local library board, I've been to a few of these conferences over the years, and have found that there's always something to learn, whether budgeting, programming, or dealing with staffing issues. And, being in Montreal, I had the opportunity to explore another city that deals with aging infrastructure (much road construction underway) and has housing issues like any other community.

Neither of these conferences was as large, or featured the extensive social opportunities that FCM does. They were also much cheaper to attend. I believe in staying within the travel budget that is alloted to each member of council - councillors are allotted $3,600 each year, the mayor's travel budget is twice that. I'm not sure where the money will come from for the councillors that are at FCM, since they all also went to SUMA (I didn't, this year), which cost $2,500. Now, apparently, the travel budget does not include conference registration - $800 for FCM. I'm not sure what part of the budget is set aside for that. I will be asking that question - once again, what is the point of setting out a budget for travel, if it doesn't include all related costs.

So, is FCM worth it? I guess that you'd have to ask those who attended, and not just whether it was worth it, but what did they learn? What ideas did they pick up that they will use in their work as a councillor? And, if the answers are disappointing, perhaps council needs to rethink its policy which sends everyone who wants to go to a national conference that is maybe not focused on the issues that should matter to city council. But conferences are a good opportunity to learn from others in the same situation, how they tackle their issues, how successful they've been, and how your community could take advantage of their experience. And learning is always a good thing.

"It is only the ignorant who despise education." - Publilius Syrus

The Base Tax Debate

The matter of whether Prince Albert should adopt a base tax was raised, even though it wasn't on the agenda, at the last council meeting. It's come up several times over the past nine years that I've been on council, including about eighteen months ago with this current council; once again, it's back.

The idea behind the base tax seems relatively simple - city services cost a certain amount each year, so the fairest thing to do is to divide the cost equally among all residences - that would be fair, right? However, the principle followed in most taxation tends to be more of a sliding scale - assessments consider that, if your home has a higher value, your tax level is higher, because you can probably afford to pay more. It's the same principle behind income tax - you make more money, not only do you pay more tax, but your income is taxed at a higher rate.

In this way, services can be provided to everybody, but at rates that recognize the basic inequities of our lives. About the only tax that I can think of that is applied fairly is sales tax - if you buy something at a certain price, you pay the same tax as someone else who buys the same item, even if they make way more money than you do. And even this is evened out somewhat by the GST rebate for lower income earners - I've never received this, but both my children have, even though I've paid more GST than they have over the course of a year.

I can get pretty passionate about the base tax, because the arguments that are used rely heavily on generalizations, and can start to make some rather cruel assumptions about lower income areas of the city. For example, I've heard (and the claim was made on the local paper's web-site) that people in lower income areas should be paying more, since that's where all the crime occurs. What about the people who live in these areas who aren't criminals? How is this fair to them? I'm pretty sure that police and fire services get called to all areas of the city. I've even called the police a few times myself, for matters ranging from a young kid breaking through the screen on the front door late one night, to a noisy neighbourhood party. I probably could have dealt with these matters myself, but the police are professionals, and, like the rest of the city, I count on and appreciate their help.

I guess that a truly fair system would be to just track police and fire calls, and bill people accordingly. Of course, then people might hesitate before calling, or decide to take matters into their own hands, which could result in even worse problems. And then, our taxes pay for far more than just police and fire services. What about the city's support of institutions such as the golf course, the Rawlinson Centre, the Art Hauser Centre, and the new soccer centre? My guess is that those people who benefit from those subsidies aren't living in lower value homes. If I have no intention of ever using the golf course or soccer centre, can I opt out of paying my share of the taxes for those? And this past winter there was a snow lift in the West Hill - the first ever in a residential area - should people who benefited from that pay more tax?

And if we want fairness, what about those of us who were paying for recycling services that we didn't receive until lately (I have a friend whose home just received a back alley recycling bin in April - several months after the city announced the program was complete, and more than five years after having this service added to the water bill). When I suggested a year ago that homes without this service should receive a rebate on their sanitation fees, more than one member of council said that people without this service were quite happy to subsidize those homes with the service - not true in at least a couple of cases that I'm aware of. And what about the unfairness of the increase in water fees to pay for upgrading - applied only to residential users, and not to commercial businesses? And that's not even getting into the unfairness of the minimum water charge - if you use less water, you still pay that minimum charge, which hardly seems fair, especially for smaller families or seniors. We can get into very murky waters very quickly when we start to talk about being fair to everyone.

A good number of my constituents are seniors, on fixed incomes. They have lived for many years here, paying taxes and being good citizens. For many of them, remaining in their own homes takes a great deal of financial balancing and sacrifice. To suggest that somehow, they owe the city more than they can afford, because of some blinkered vision of "fairness" doesn't seem right to me.

A base tax will put proportionately more tax burden on our poorest citizens. I cannot support that, and I won't.

"Very few people can afford to be poor." George Bernard Shaw

Keeping It Professional

One of the aspects of being on City Council that can prove difficult for some, is the need to keep our decisions and actions professional, rather than personal.

As an individual, I'm free to choose what stores to patronize, for whatever reasons I feel are important, whether it be price, service, or what I think of the owner. When making decisions on council, however, I and the rest of council need to make purchase decisions for the city based on objective facts only, not on personal feelings or biases. One way of making sure that decisions are made that way is to tender major purchases and contracts. This should make the process public, and ensure that reasons for the decisions are open and defensible.

Other guidelines that help to keep actions and decisions professional are in our legislation, bylaws and policies. This means that, for instance, if someone applies for a licence, and meets all the qualifications set out in our licensing bylaws and policies, then approval is given. Our decision cannot be affected by our personal relationship with that individual, be it positive or negative. And we can't let our personal feelings about the type of business cloud the decision either - as an individual, I may not agree with certain activities or the businesses that allow them, but if the activity is allowed under law, and the area proposed for business establishment is zoned accordingly, then I can't vote against it based on my own feelings or intangible factors.

Of course, for this to work, we on council have to monitor ourselves. When we fail to follow established policy or legislation, whether it's because we feel that we don't have time, or that we needn't follow decisions made by a previous council, we throw all our processes into question. When we raise irrelevant factors in decision-making, we do the same, because that then suggests that all our decisions are affected by irrelevancies. And when we continuously rush through processes, because we have established our own schedules and ideas on how things should be done, rather than following those rules set in legislation, bylaw or policy, and rather than allowing open discussion and providing the public with realistic opportunity for input, then we give the impression that we're an exclusive club that doesn't have to follow the rules.

We need to remember that, in a democracy, we're not just answerable to ourselves; we're answerable to the people that we represent. And we need to be able to tell those people honestly, that every decision that we've made has been based on the best interests of the city, not ourselves.

Speaking of being answerable, I've heard very clearly from people that using taxpayers' dollars to pay for meals at council and committee meetings is not acceptable. I'm sorry that I didn't see it from that aspect earlier, but I am no longer sharing in the meals provided at council or committee meetings. I always try to say what I think, and act accordingly, and this seems to me to be the right thing to do.

"Impatience never commanded success." - Edwin Hubbel Chapin

The Nuclear Question

Over the past few months, since Bruce Power announced that it might be interested in building a nuclear power facility in Saskatchewan, and especially since the mayor and members of the Chamber of Commerce visited a Bruce Power facility in Ontario, the interest of the public in discussing the possibility of such a facility has grown by leaps and bounds.

This interest took another jump forward after the city commissioned a public opinion survey on the issue, then announced the results just before Bruce Power held open houses here.

You should be aware that the decision to hold the survey was not made by council. We found out about the survey while it was going on. If we had been consulted before the decision was made, I would have suggested that holding such a survey was premature, and that the wording of the questions, particularly including the adjective "green" without defining it, made the results questionable.

However, I am encouraged by the public interest in the issue, and the evident engagement of many thoughtful and committed individuals. The key to effective public involvement is to find an issue that people care about, and this issue is clearly one that people want to discuss and debate, publicly, and would like more information about.

Like many residents, I'm looking for more information. While I grew up in Ontario, where nuclear energy is a fact of life, I still think that there are many questions that should be answered before I can form an opinion about whether this would be a positive step for Prince Albert. With that in mind, I've been taking advantage of the opportunities for learning - I attended an interesting debate on the tar sands at the library, where the nuclear question came up; I went to the Bruce Power open house; I was able to catch the end of a renewable energy options forum at Wesley United Church after a council meeting, and I went outside to listen to the people who gathered at City Hall before last week's council meeting. All of these provided useful information, and raised more questions.

What I would find useful is a straight-forward comparision of all the options out there, answering all the questions, from cost of start-up (and how this would be funded), through ongoing costs, to environmental impact (including impacts on air, water, wildlife, etc), to reliability, to life span of any facility, through to waste disposal. Right now I find that many of the arguments get angry very quickly, without providing that sort of side-by-side comparison that might help people avoid getting caught up in the emotions of the moment. And I'm willing to accept that no solution is perfect, but this way the least risky options could be identified.

I also think that a decision of this magnitude is one that belongs directly to the people who will be affected. We have plenty of time to develop a clear, unambiguous question about whether a nuclear facility should be built in or near Prince Albert, and include it in this year's election.

A side benefit? Having such a question to answer might motivate more people to actually get out and vote, and democratically, that would be a good thing.

"It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it." - Joseph Joubert

The Third Vote Tango

A proposed bylaw must have three separate readings and votes before it takes effect, according to Section 77 of the Cities Act. The first two readings may happen in a single meeting, but for the third to happen, there must be unanimous consent of all members of council present for that to occur.

Why the wait? I believe it’s there to provide an opportunity for the public to comment on any proposed change that will affect them, before the final vote is made. It also gives an opportunity for sober second thought by members of council.

Most times bylaw passing is a mere formality, and I have no problem with consenting to three votes in one meeting. But if it’s something that I feel will affect the public, and I don’t think that there has been adequate time for public input, then I won’t consent. It’s that simple. It’s the process that is laid out in our governing law, and I have to assume that it’s there for good reason.

Several years ago, before I was a member of council, a family came to council one night with a proposal to paint a mural on the wall of City Hall, to honour their father, who had recently passed away. Ignoring the fact that City Hall does not belong to council, that painting over the Tyndall stone probably wasn’t the best thing to do, and that it marred the architectural appearance of a lovely building, the council of the day had three votes in one night, and the painting started the next day. I was appalled, as were many people I spoke to, and that memory has remained with me, reminding me how the public may have a different view than council, and should have the opportunity to provide that view before it's too late.

With that in mind, I don’t always consent to that third vote. In previous councils, when consent wasn’t granted, the third vote would happen two weeks later, at the next council meeting. Once I can remember the mayor of the day, and another councillor, getting a bit cranky with me because I wouldn’t give consent, but they had enough respect for the process not to try to bulldoze through it.

This council doesn’t operate that way – if something doesn’t pass according to plan, then a special meeting is scheduled for as soon as possible, without considering the opportunity for the public to comment.

So on Monday evening, the budget bylaw was read twice, and we voted twice. While there are some things that are good in this budget, there are more things that I can’t agree to support. And I believe that the process was far too rushed, unnecessarily so. Council didn’t have adequate time to review or discuss this massive document; neither did the public. I have yet to hear a good reason for the hurry, since the mill rate, based on this budget as well as other factors, won’t be set until late May. So I voted against the budget, although most of council supported it. When it came time to consent to a third reading, I didn’t consent, so the third vote didn’t happen.

I suppose some people might wonder why I bother, since it’s going to pass anyway. Why not consent, why hold things up?

The answer is easy: voting for what I believe is right is a commitment that I have made to the people of Ward Three, and a commitment that I have kept for the past nine years. If I start voting for things that I don’t believe in, just because I’m not going to win, then I’ve betrayed the trust of the people of my ward. Nowhere in the oath of office does it commit me to voting against my principles just so council can appear to be one voice; nowhere does it say that before every vote I should look to the front of the room to see when to raise my hand; nowhere does it say that a successful council is one on which everyone agrees on everything, all the time.

So I’ll be voting according to my principles once again, at tomorrow’s special meeting, scheduled because this council believes that whatever the majority wants, the majority should have, as soon as they want it, and to hell with the process.

"Strength of numbers is the delight of the timid." – Mahatma Gandhi