Bolin's Blog and Grill

Yesterday's Council Meeting turned into a marathon with many Delegations speaking to a number of issues.  Chief among these were the budget, and in particular the cut to gender specific guarding at the City jail cells.  There were many speakers both male and female who supported the continuance of gender specific guards and who presented compelling reasons for this practice.  It was noted that Nanaimo provides much needed leadership in this area.  What was not made clear was why having some female guards add some $300,000 per year.  Why does having a mixed set of guards increase costs so greatly.  I hope to hear back on this.

Another major topic of interest was the BIA/DNPS which brought out a large number of speakers on both sides.  In the end, both BIA bylaws were passed by Council with Councillor Sherry voting no on the particular BIA in which there was a majority against the matter but insufficient property value among that majority.  All other Councillors supported both BIAs, thus providing $200,000 per year in taxpayers money to match the funds raised in the BIAs.  There are to be some major changes in the management of the DNPS.  We will probably hear more about this in the future.  We hope what we hear will be good.

There was no concensus on the budget recommendations which staff presented.  In fact the actions which Council took on the budget were quite different.  Both items on which they did act deal with our city jail.  They determined that the $750,000 which is to be spent in upgrading our jail under demands from the RCMP will be paid from reserves.  This will reduce property taxes by about one percent.  They also determined that gender specific guarding is to be maintained, rejecting the staff recommendation in this regard.

They could not agree last night on other staff recommendations or on additions from the list of 28 additional possible cuts that were contained in the budget.  Futhermore Council questioned why some capital items seemed to go on into future years despite being funded in a previous year.  There was no satisfactory answer to this question.  The upshot of this discussion was to postpone further discussion and to send the report back to staff for further work.

To my way of thinking citizens should be giving both staff and council their opinions on the cuts which staff have proposed or others which the public might find better for the common wealth.

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