The Town’s deceptive Budget-finding Process 2009
As of today, democratic principles in the budget process like accountability, transparency and the involvement of the public seem to have been trampled on by the Town Administration. Such principles obviously work in this Town as slogans during election campaigns only.
The Town’s 1-page flyer – delivered via Postal Services prior to the Council Meeting on May 26, 2009 – under the headline “2009-2010 Proposed Budget Overview” states in its first sentence “There have been several Council working sessions, which were open to members of the public, …”.
On May 26, 2009, at the official Council meeting, Mr. David Daniels was turned down by Mayor Stead when he intended to ask some questions to get necessary explanations. The Mayor as chair of the table was accepting “input” only but no questions. Maybe, he could learn that related questions are very valuable input as well.
To me the most valuable and most useful comment that evening was done by Mr. Doug Lutz. He pointed out that in difficult and challenging times ahead the budget expenditures should be broken down into 3 categories (priorities) freely interpreted as:
- What does the Town absolutely need to do?
- What would be nice to do?
- What would be very nice to do?
This was obviously not done and was never done before. And each category then would determine different amounts of expenditures and directly related services the Wolfville residents would be able to get at that required tax level.
The money available would be spent in the highest category first. And if money would be left there the next category down would be addressed and so on.
As always in the past, the too many directors provided Brideau with a wish list at the beginning of the budget process.
They then defended their items to underline and boost their ego and imagined importance during the process and no outsider and maybe even Councillor would understand in most cases the actual necessity of the requested amounts of rounded thousand-dollar figures and its direct impact on general service levels to be provided to Wolfville residents.
There are no challenges to these directors to do an excellent or even a good or poor job only.
They are not given and measurable objectives at the beginning of the budget year and full performance evaluations at the end of it. They have easy and well paid jobs because these directors are dealing with tax payers’ money and not their own.
In this context I regard Director Kerr as an exception due to the fact that he really made an effort to cut his wish list back.
As stated at the beginning of this article, democratic principles like accountability, transparency and the involvement of the public were trampled on by the Town again.
This is underlined by the fact that a proposed budget draft - accessible to the public - was available on the Town’s web site in the late afternoon of Friday, May 22, 2009 only, just 4 days prior to the Council meeting on May 26, 2009.
No resident could really understand, grasp and digest the 63 pages with the very many short-labelled items on them drafted according to governmental regulations.
There was not enough time and question periods for the public had been eliminated beforehand by this Administration.
I regard all these planned actions of the Town Administration as an intentional deception to keep the public uninformed and out of the important budget process.
Obviously, the Town Administration did not want to repeat the good intentions during last year’s budget process sessions when the public got really involved and was allowed to ask questions about the multiple short-labelled and sometimes wrongly labelled budget items.
Last year the interest and attendance of residents and tax payers during these sessions were much higher due to the created emotions by the Town regarding the proposed high tax rate figure in the beginning of the process. Brideau had promised there and then to come up this year with different versions of budget drafts, especially for the public (in addition to the governmental ones), to make the whole process and the very many items more understandable and maybe self-explanatory. The 1-page Overview is just a farce of the Administration not covering Brideau’s promise to any possible degree of satisfaction.
The quick reader of the Overview may become fooled by the enlarged statement that the residential tax rate might go down this year by two cents to $1.39. In relation to the actual taxes to be paid by the residents this is a deceptive projection as well due to the fact that the taxes this year will increase to its highest level ever according to the increase of assessment values. Even with a possible decrease of the tax rate by 2 cents the taxes will go up.
This proves again that repeated election slogans regarding “no tax increases” are worth nothing to Wolfville residents. In this context I was enlightened to read Brian Sanderson’s critical comments on his blog under the headline: “Rocket Science: what goes up, just keeps going up!” He writes: “…Taxes increase because Council, Staff, and Special Interest Groups just L-O-V-E to spend more and more of your {the residents’} money. … ” And further down he writes that he could not make it to attend the meeting on May 26, 2009 stating: “Perhaps it’s just as well I wasn’t there. It seems that a bunch of Hospice Builders descended, like a plague of locusts, to strip-mine the pockets of the long-suffering taxpayers of the woeful Town of Waffleville. Apparently, they expect Wolfville Taxpayers to build them a Hospice in some other town!!!”
The Hospice request in the amount of $114,553 is for sure based on a worthy cause but does it have to be superimposed on Wolfville tax payers over a time period of many years?
To me it is very questionable from a legal point of view that this Council is given the powers and authority to bind Wolfville residents 8 to 9 years into the future for yearly grant payments to the Hospice. Grant items 8 to 9 years into the future should not even discussed at the table during the budget process 2009.
Symptomatic for the Town’s attitude on spending tax payers’ money exorbitantly seems to be the recent trips of Brideau and 3 Councillors to Whistler B.C. Whistler was the selected meeting point for the 72nd conference of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCA). Brideau went to Whistler prior to the actual conference to chat with CAOs of other municipalities across Canada. I do not mind one Town official to attend a FCM conference but I have a problem to understand why - in difficult and challenging times - three Councillors were provided “pleasure trips” in addition to Brideau on tax payers’ expenses as well.
What is it these Councillors don’t understand about necessary budget constraints, hopefully resulting in no tax increases for residents?
Maybe it would have been asking too much of Brideau, who does cost the Wolfville tax payer more than $115,000 this budget year in salaries and pension contributions, to take some notes at the conference on issues of possible relevance or interest to the Wolfville community. Even with multiple sessions running in parallel during the conference, it should have been an easy task to collect important hand-outs and/or web site addresses comprising the presented key messages for a briefing of all Councillors after his return.
The remaining 3 Councillors and the Mayor will have to be briefed anyhow and I would like to sit in and listen during these briefings to evaluate if any “new ideas” have a chance to become implemented which thereafter should make Wolfville a better governed community.
During one of the oncoming Council meetings I shall ask about the costs for the 4 officials involved (air-fares, transfers to and from airports, hotel expenses, meals and food allowances, conference or registration fees, etc.). My best guess is that the total costs will be far more than $ 10,000.
Furthermore and regarding travel expenses, I cannot accept the almost stupid excuse that two Councillors used Air-Miles acquired by the Town to pay for their flights. These Air-Miles represent a money value and have to be treated like tax payers’ payments and have to be compared to the regular prices of full-fare tickets. The Air-Miles could have been used on different occasions, even in a different year, when a Town official really will have to go on an important trip benefiting the Wolfville community.
Maybe, these “pleasure trips” on tax payers’ expense were intended to “motivate” the attending Councillors to vote this month on an increase of the tax rate over and above the proposed $1.39. I really wonder what travel promises or other ones were made to the Councillors left behind this time to vote for an increased tax rate to cover for unnecessary and/or pleasure expenditures as well.
If this is really symptomatic on how Councillors deal with tax payers’ money and their broken election promises the Wolfville tax payer cannot rely on the proposed budget figures including the proposed tax rate and should expect the worst when the budget is planned to be finalized this month.
Lutz E. Becker / June 09, 2009
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