City Must Tell The Budget Truth: BENN
What can we expect when the $36 million hole in the budget doesn’t disappear all by itself?
Mayor Mark Sutcliffe has said the city will have to take drastic action if the senior levels of government do not cover the $36-million place-keeper in this year’s city budget. That’s when his fairness campaign continues to not resonate and he finally concludes that no-means-no.
We should not ask what a prudent senior management team would do because a prudent senior management team would not have created this dilemma in the first place. It would have presented a balanced budget, as per provincial law.
What we should ask is whether Plan B has already been crafted. Whether it actually balances the budget with something other than another place-keeper. Has Plan B been circulated around the council offices to see if there is sufficient support for it? We should demand that council reveal it to us, now … not if and only if necessary.
This is a council that continues to fail to meet the minimum standards for governance for two solid years now. Put aside questions about the failure to table the statutory required a balanced budget. What about the three fundamentals of any good governance model?
Openness: Warning us that unpleasant realities might hit us square in the nose does not constitute openness. That is nothing more than theatrics. Screen Writing 101: create a state of suspense. Frighten the audience into thinking about what will happen next. Questions like how will this impact me and my family? The only thing missing is a bit of Hitchcock music, heavy on the slow bass beat. Then, when the final reveal happens, well it isn’t as bad as we imagined in the dark of a cold winter night.
Transparency: Visibility into the decision-making process. What decision-making process … the one that led to the surprise $36-million hole? The one where the budget is crafted based on the illusion of a maximum tax rate increase of 2.9 per cent. Except for that other element, notably the nearly 20 per cent of your property tax bill that is (mis)directed towards public transit. That will now exceed 25 per cent of next year’s bill.
Accountability: The $36 million is due to the federal government not paying its fair share of Property Taxes in Lieu. The provincial government not giving Ottawa as much money per capita as it gives to other cities. “It’s not us, it’s them” is not accountability. That excuse is something that the vice-principal might expect from an elementary school kid who gets caught in an altercation with a classmate. And it deserves as much respect as the vice-principal gives it, along with the detention.
What we deserve is openness, transparency and accountability. And nothing less.
Openness: A clear description of how the city will solve its $36-million dilemma. We should be told which services will be eliminated and which services will be cut. How will these reductions in service levels impact the residents and employers of the city? Short-term and long-term followed by a description of alternatives that were considered but ultimately left to the side. And why. Oh, and if you tell us that we won’t feel a thing, then you will need to explain why those decisions weren’t made before the budget was tabled.
Transparency: We should be told how those service-curtailment decisions were made. What were the decision criteria? How were those criteria selected? Why are the selected criteria the most important?
Accountability: Start with an apology for tabling an unbalanced budget, with an explicit acknowledgement that was in contravention of the provincial statutes. Follow it up with a mea culpa or 25 about how the city got into this position in the first place. Feel free to acknowledge that prior budgets were manipulated for reasons of political expediency. That’s right. It is okay to point the finger at your predecessors. Don’t worry about throwing half of the current council under the bus. That is where they deserve to be. Next, vow to never be so arrogant in the future as to table an unbalanced budget. Acknowledge that meeting your statutory obligations should be more important to you than getting re-elected.
Finally, sit down, be quiet and take the slings and arrows that you deserve. And learn from it.
Ron Benn, a finance executive, has been a member of the Centrepointe Community Association for the better part of three decades.
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A few more speed cameras and they will have that balanced out, no problem
C. Black spray paint on the lenses of the speed cameras. Vive la resistance.
“… if you tell us that we won’t feel a thing, then you will need to explain why those decisions weren’t made before the budget was tabled.”
This is one of the bits I’m awaiting with bated breath, an explanation of how they could have averted the illegal hole in the budget but chose not to. It’s my belief that a Plan B has been formulated and given to all members of council as long ago as October. Any councillor who knows anything about municipal finances, which admittedly appears not to be all of them, would surely have pointed out the glaring hole.
I suggest that they would have had the long term plan explained to them in order to reassure them and get their vote locked in. That long term plan would have included what’s rolled out so far including the fake rise and subsequent lowering of the senior fares and the plans from budget day forward which include the items that will eventually be put forward to fill the $36M hole.
The timetable for Plan B may have been altered slightly because of the changing political scene at the federal level and the impending elections but the core and the list for the chopping block or cost increases will remain largely unchanged.
I do wonder if the province is aware of Plan B which would explain why they haven’t yet responded, at least not publicly, to the passing of an illegal budget.
So, Mr Sutcliffe, it’s time to open the door and show us what we are about to be subjected to and which programs and services we can bid farewell to soon. Or is it your plan to hold off until the very last moment and then tell us that there’s nothing to be done but hack away at services and raise the cost of others because we are on the brink of a precipice? That, of course, would be dishonest and manipulative when this is the time to come clean and display some integrity.