So we can conclude one of two things happened - people either support the increase or they don't care enough to voice their opinion. There certainly isn't a vocal groundswell of opposition to it. Durham Region's budget clocked in at a 2.42 per cent increase and Oshawa, our big neighbour to the west, squeeked in a meagre 0.7 per cent increase to their budget.
Three points about the budget:
- This is clearly an Adrian Foster budget. He never marketed himself as a voracious tax-cutting mayor but as a prudent manager of town finances. It's clear he's aiming for four per cent annual increases - more or less - without zeros or eight per cent increases.
- It's so expected. Other than budget hawks, who among us really expected a zero per cent increase budget? Ward 3 Local Councillor Corinna Traill could only muster council support for three of her 20 cost-cutting suggestions - and even had they all succeeded we would still have had about a two per cent increase - and she's one of the budget slashers. With inflation and the majority of council amenable to staffing increases, a four per cent or so increase always looked likely.
- This foreshadows a repeat next year with maybe a dash of good news. Oshawa is getting a great deal of attention for its relatively low increase. This means that next year or the year after, if inflation increases a point or three, Clarington will probably match or even come in slightly under Oshawa's increase because the other governments will be playing catch-up - I'm thinking the police may ask for more feet on the street in the Region's case, which they didn't this year.
In the end I feel dissatisfied with everything about this budget.
There is no vision - no imagination - and that includes the duo of Traill and Ward 1 Local Councillor Joe Neal.
We even had the spectacle of Traill - who herself accused council of flip-flopping earlier in the year while actually brandishing a flip-flop - voting against the budget and thereby against her promised additional firefighters.
Credit therefore goes to Foster for passing a budget that ups the number of firefighters - which is exactly what he promised.
Cost-cutting duo Traill and Neal's big idea seems to be to look for nickels and dimes from various programs - which is fine - but that approach won't get to zero or - gasp - lower. Plus, there's nothing bold about an upcoming plan to re-examine benefits packages - just about every company is doing it and I suspect the savings won't be all that much in the long run - insurance companies know how to adapt.
I definitely don't get the sense of a great plan brewing, something innovative, a systemic change that replaces the structural increases we are building into the system.
Until someone steps back and looks at the whole concept of what local government should be in the business of providing - and how - this situation will continue. Self-styled opponents - elected and non-elected - will be left looking for a couple bucks in savings by skimming from here and there - trimming parsley from the prime rib dinner if you will - and claiming they tried their best.
But real savings will miraculously remain elusive.
Let me put it this way - it's like paying for a trip to Disney World and haggling over whether to pay for an iced cream cone on the flight down and boasting about how much money we can save. What I'm suggesting is we need to forget the vacation altogether and focus on maybe setting up our own flight service to make a few bucks and cash in on all this vacationing going on.
Something like that I can get behind but this budget - more of the same.
In my next blog post I'm going to look at why the Host Community Agreement no longer matters to the prospects of Clarington hosting an incinerator.
