Monday's Council meeting had at two presentations regarding the 2009 budget for which we will all be dinged this year. I presented a plea that citizens should be informed why the cost of running the city should be rising at twice the cost of living and Fred Taylor wondered why, when taxpayers paid about $6 million more in taxes in 2007 than was spent (with an apparently as yet unknown amount last year) , that we should have any increase in taxes at all this year. There was no serious discussion of either of these points, though it was obvious that our City Manager felt that putting money into the City's piggy bank was better than returning it to the pockets from which it had been picked.
I attended the budget presentation of Engineering and Public Works projects to FPCOW (Finance and Policy Committee of the Whole) this evening, hoping to find some justification for an approximate $14 million expenditure on a new public works building on Labieaux Road which I mentioned at Council on Monday as a possible postponement. I am afraid I did not hear any financially justifiable reason for a new structure. $14 million represents about 18.5% points on our 2009 budget and by itself could not only reduce any increase, but could bring about a sizable decrease.
It is not that I object to taxes or to new buildings or to high hopes, but I do expect them to be fully justified, and it is this lack of justification which I have found throughout what I have heard during the budget process. We seem to be dealing with desires and have failed to adequately distinguish them from the requires. We are entering into a period where the requires may be all that our taxpayers can afford.
Nanaimo currently has about $22 million in discretionary reserve funds -nearly 30 budget percentage points- in discretionary reserve (savings) funds. I was incensed on Monday when the City Manager commented that to use any of these funds to reduce taxes would be like someone spending some of their RRSP funds when times were tough. I wish that the city would realize that this is what many of our citizens have to do now and more may have to do in the coming years. The city may have the option to continue to increase their revenue by means of taxes during hard times. Citizens do not.
