Prince George council's refusal to disclose city spending on a monthly rather than annual basis for reasons of dollars and cents raises a whole lot of questions.
Not to mention Mayor Shari Green's comment that "From my perspective, every expenditure by the city is defensible." More on that later.
First, let's consider the details:
The estimated 64 to 90 man hours per year needed to create a monthly spending report at, say $30 an hour, adds up to a maximum of $2,700 per year.
Put another way, it's one staffer taking one day per month to create the report and file the information online.
That's the proposal - and it's too expensive, according to councillors.
Here's the way things are now:
City corporate services director Kathleen Soltis said current spending reports are "very high level" and anyone wanting details would have to file a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.
So let's say someone wants the cost of postage stamps in December. They fill out an FOI form requesting everything associated with costs of said stamps in said month.
Then a colossal amount of time is spent rooting through every scrap of paper from every department for every postage-stamp-related email, meeting minutes, letter and anything else deemed in the public interest.
All this when a simple dollar figure would've sufficed.
The city offsets some of the costs to complete such requests by charging the person asking the question. But wouldn't a staffer's time be better spent on another project, no matter what the offset charges?
And should citizens be charged for information that's supposed to be public in the first place?
And wouldn't directing individuals to the city website be such an enormously easier way to go?
As documents are posted online, FOI requests would drop off. Calls to City Hall would drop off.
That's seems like a more rational dollars and cents decision.
Now back to the mayor's confusing comment:
If it really is true that "every expenditure by the city is defensible," why did council just eliminate the equivalent 24 full time positions? And why is the city spending $350,000 to review all those expenditures?
And if it's worth $350,000 to provide detailed accounts to one set of decision makers (i.e. councillors), why is spending so casually withheld from the other set of decision makers (i.e. voters)?
(By the way, it would take 129 years of filing monthly spending reports online to add up to $350,000.)
Voters have proven time and again how much they care about where their money is being spent.
A majority of Prince George voters agreed fat was in serious need of trimming at City Hall, that's the main reason Green and her ilk were elected.
Why not open the books so people can form opinions over where to lose that fat?
Wouldn't it be politically prudent to gauge interest rather than blindly swing at budget cuts?
Is it really all just to save $2,700 a year?
It's all so very mystifying.
-- Prince George Citizen
