A Budget Rant

At the Special meeting of Council  last night to discuss budget- making , we heard  how the City of Barrie does it.. 
Councillors meet with staff, singly or in pairs or few enough not to constitute a council meeting.
They ask all of their questions and receive a thorough explanation  from the experts  in a private setting.
Then after  a day long public session , they clinch  the budget.
From my perspective, Aurora Council is not looking for a shorter more expeditious way of creating a budget. 
It appears  to me there is dis-satisfaction that for all the hours we spend on the task, the feeling is Council did not have enough influence on the final outcome.
Yet, for a bunch of hedonistic politicians, hugely reluctance hangs about to say  anything that might hint of  criticism,
The slightest negative inflection is accompanied by overwhelming assurance of the wonderful work staff do. .
I do not find clarity in the budget process. 
In my judgement, an operating  budget should set out previous year's budgeted amount, actual cost and proposed cost to continue the program and source of revenue.
Everybody should be able to follow the budget.
The  increased spending figures over the previous year are  more relevant than per centage factors.A percent of sixty-nine million is significantly more than a per cent of seventy-nine million.
Increased   revenue  from growth should be a  highlight.
Growth in  spending should be relevant  to growth in revenue. .
A statement often heard is that growth does not pay for itself. 
Why oes it not?.
It's easy enough to spend like drunken sailors and then toss out the 
the suspect phrase, growth does not pay for itself.
Education  has not increased on the property tax for several years. The treasurer argues the  provincial intent   is  to give municipalities  more room to tax.
I entirely disagree. 
We build facilities we could never contemplate without  90% development charge revenue.
We require developers to pay for infrastructure. Then we incease
taxes to pay for infrastructure.
The federal government provides a share of gas tax..This year it was $1.4 million dollars. 
Assessment growth was $1.4 million give or take a dollar.
We didn't  have $650 thousand to pay for an extended O.M.B. hearing.  Nor $65 thousand for legal expenses to sue town residents.
We continued to hand over half a million of tax revenues to a non-accountable body to spend on stuff that by no stretch of anyone's  imagination could be considered  essential. .
$50 thousand dollars to the Arboretum to plant trees.
 Another $50.thousand to the Historical Society while we have no museum to operate.
We increased taxes by 4.7 per cent and continued to blather on about growth not paying for growth.
We contend  people living  today should be obliged to put money in a reserve  (a rainy day fund)  so that people living twenty years from now won't have to pay what it costs to  maintain facilities we built and they continue to enjoy. .
I figure,  increased revenues from assessment and gas tax sharing from senior  level , reduced expenditures here and there.in 2012 we are spending  $11 million dollars more than we did  in 2011.
If it keeps up this way , in our term of office, this council will have presided over an overall budget  increase of  about thirty million dollars. And there will be  added debt. 
At a time when we  foresee an end  to the town's  growth, we will have  increased full-time staff,  let hundreds of thousand dollars worth of consultant contracts,. constructed  forty million dollars worth of administrative and works facilities.and other cockamamie schemes like snow- melting  treatment facilities, sidewalks on both sides of an industrial road at a cost of a $1 million apiece, where no  pedestrians are ever seen to walk.
We will be purchasing  "culture" at an annual increased cost of 3% 
to the tune of  best part of a million.
We will  bleat about how growth doesn't pay for growth while spending  hand over fist,  greedily absorbing whatever assistance senior levels of government choose to hand out to lessen the burden on homeowners.while ensuring no such relief is realized.
Yes sir, we will have something to account for at the end of our term, if we do not take hold of the budget now.   
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