To: Mayor M. McIvor,
Deputy Mayor P. Grieg,
And Councillors,
Municipality of Northern Bruce Peninsula.

CC: The Bruce Peninsula Press.

Presentation on the Proposed 2004 Municipality of North Bruce Budget for the Stokes Bay Ratepayers Association.

This submission is written in answer to the proposed Budget submitted to the taxpayers of the Municipality of Northern Bruce Peninsula on Wednesday April 21, 2004 for comment prior to it’s proposed passage at the council meeting of April 26, 2004.

Let me preface my comments by stating that this proposed budget and the figures behind it remind me of something produced by a corporation where the board of directors has lost control and the organization's managers have run wild. Unfortunately we the taxpayers (shareholders) can only change the board every 3 years.

Item 1: Council remuneration.

While I agree that it is not right that the various members of council have not had a raise since 1999, I find the size of the increase nothing short of obscene. A raise of 25% for the Mayor, 30% for the Deputy Mayor, and 37% for the Councillors, then an 18% raise in the remuneration for full day meetings and 6% for half day meetings which adds up to an astounding 30.7% increase to $30,500 from $23,333, in the remuneration for council according to the proposed budget. Then, there is a proposed increase of 22.6% to $43,750 from $33,827, in the proposed budget for special meetings. I myself, and I am sure the great majority of the taxpayers who do not have the benefit of voting our own raises, have had nowhere near a 30% increase in our income or pensions in the last 4 years. I would not object to a cost of living increase plus a real money increase of 1 or 2 percent or about a 10 % total, which is probably still more than most of the rest of the wage earners and pensioners in the Municipality have received.

Item 2: Lack of cohesive control of the Budgetary Process.

This is evidenced by 2 interesting examples. The first of these is the Wages and Benefits section under administration. In 2002 the Municipality budgeted for $274,391 then actually spent $326,824, 19% over budget. So in 2003 the Council budgets for $408,750, a whopping 25% increase over the 19% they were over budget in 2002, and still manages to run over budget by $159, 008 or 38.9%. In the 2004 proposed budget there is a $36,250 or 8.86% increase over the 2003 budget factored in. History shows that this administration either cannot or will not stick to a budget.

The second of these I find interesting is the Municipality is advertising for another senior administration position, “Recreation and Facilities Supervisor” while only budgeting a $36,250 increase in the wages and benefits section for Administration over 2003, you know the budget we overshot by 38.9%, unless the balance is spread out in the allocations to the various facilities where it is hidden by other increases. Now there may be a rational explanation for this apparent mismanagement, but there is no way to tell as the documentation provided to the taxpayers to assist in understanding the budget and the secrecy with which it has been prepared make it impossible to find out.

Item 3: Budgetary and the overall secrecy under which this administration and council operate.

The knack the administration of the municipality, and this and the previous council have had for doing things in a secret or near secret way as possible. That the taxpayers, Ratepayers groups, and community groups of North Bruce should be subject to a process where they get their first look at the budget on a Wednesday afternoon and are expected to decipher it, understand it, and make knowledgeable comment on it by the following Monday afternoon council meeting, is nothing more than holding a gun to peoples heads, picking their pockets and hoping you are gone before they even know there is such a thing as a policeman to call. Possibly if this Municipality had a public budgetary process, where councilors sit down with the department heads in public and actually question them in open forum in the public view, as do many others, we would know why the policing budget has jumped by $139,000 dollars before we budget the money, instead of council passing the increase and then seeking information later. I will address this issue of secrecy further at a later date. For now I feel that this Council and the administration needs to be reminded that the public's business needs to be done in public not behind closed doors.

I will close by saying that I do appreciate the effort council puts into doing the Municipalities business, I just wish they would change how they do that business.


Thank you,

N. H. Allwood,
President,
Stokes Bay Ratepayers Association,
160 Tamarac Rd.,
Stokes Bay, Ont.