In every discussion there are at least two sides, each willing to make statements and present facts that will convince you that their side is right.
Recently The Citizen ran a story about a report from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) which stated that "Many municipalities perpetuate the myth that they are hard done by when it comes to revenues. The reality, is that they are addicted to the overspending. Its grossly unfair to taxpayers who suffer tax and fee increases that outstrip their pay increases."
It went on to say, if "excess spending" in Prince George had been eliminated the 2008 tax bill for the average family of four would have been reduced by $1,464.
Needless to say, the city is not happy with this report and has tried to defend itself.
Mayor Rogers said the CFIB authors seem to have included all city operational spending, which would include unforeseen costs, while weighing that against regular operational spending. But costs are costs regardless of what the money was spent on.
If left to the city there would always be an excuse as to why these sort of reports should be discounted, as our mayor tried to point out by stating the report "fails to recognize unique circumstances. Mother Nature pays no attention to the rate of inflation when she sends us an ice jam, or forest fires, or a lot of snow, but we have to pay for those things."
Surely an ice jam in Prince George has no effect on the rate of inflation in Canada.
We get snow every year in Prince George, and forest firefighting is the jurisdiction of the province not the municipality. Yes the ice jam was an anomaly and yes the city did spend somewhere between $6 million and $8 million to control and fix it, but because the ice jam was declared a state of emergency by the province, response costs (which by Feb. 12, 2008 were at $4.33M) are covered completely by the provincial government, and costs for recovery work - which at the time stood at $32,000 - were covered 80 per cent by the province and 20 per cent by the city. Even before the flooding had struck, River Road had been targeted for a three-year, $4.2-million upgrade, which tells us that the money had already been budgeted for. The city was also to get $2 million from the provincial government for flood mitigation work along River Road.
Chamber of Commerce president Roy Spooner waded in with this gem, "The average person has neither the time nor the inclination to test the veracity of the truth, so the average person is merely incited to get upset, when they read a report like this one."
But has Spooner had the time or the inclination to test the veracity of what he thinks the truth is?
The average person has every right to get upset with the city after a report like this, especially in light of the wages the city pays to its staff and the number of staff receiving more than $75,000; three garbage rate increases in one year; $4.3 million spent on consultants fees in 2008 alone; and land purchased for projects that the public hasn't even given the OK for, it is stark wonder that the general public doesn't want to hear the excuses.
Rogers, in another attempt to debunk the report said the amount paid to the police is fixed to the crime rate, not the population rate, and the amount paid to firefighters is based on emergency response demands, no matter how many families moved in or out of the city in a given period.
So what he seems to be telling us is, if the RCMP want more money (for a new building for example) all they have to do is show that the rate of crime is going up in the city. But what about the firefighters? If the amount paid to firefighters is based on emergency response demands then the airport fire hall should get no money at all. When is the last time you heard about the airport firehall responding to an emergency let alone a fire. The one fire we did have at the airport (NT Air hangar) they were not allowed to respond to.
Rogers also said, "I suppose in 2009 the CFIB is going to say we were off base again because it cost us $6 million to remove the abnormal amount of snow we got."
But what is not mentioned here is that although we did have more snow in 2009, we spent $5.54 million in 2008 removing snow, so shouldn't it be only the difference between what we paid in 2008 and what we paid in 2009 which would be only $460,000.
While we are on the topic of snow removal, if this is such a huge and important part of our budget, then wouldn't you expect that if we get less snow then the taxes and spending should go down.
However when we went from 220.7 cm in 1999 to 165.2 cm in 2000 the amount residents paid on their property tax bill went up by .55 per cent. When we went from 165.2 cm in 2000 to 123.2 cm in 2001 the property-tax bill went up by 3 per cent. When we went from 227.5 cm in 2004 to 94.4 in 2005 the property-tax bill went up by 2.99 per cent. When we went from 259.4 cm in 2006 to 230.8 cm in 2007 the property-tax bill went up by 7.2 per cent. When we went from 230.8 cm in 2007 to 211 cm in 2008 the property-tax bill went up by 4.87 per cent.
Spooner pointed to other more comprehensive studies - a couple done by the financial management firm KPMG - that lauded Prince George as having an excellent business climate. The only problem is, there is a huge difference between having an excellent business climate and actually getting business to come here, but isn't that what we give more than $1 million of city taxpayer money to Initiatives Prince George for, but that is another matter.
Also, according to Spooner, "The real questions are, is there wasteful spending going on?"
A 22 per cent ($35,000) pay increase for the city manager over two years...why don't we just let the general public make the decision on wasteful spending.
