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Prince Rupert Regional Information
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NATURESea, land, river PEOPLESCommunity
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December
Budget update/ Summary given to Council January 23rd
meeting +
‘Flying on Automatic Piot’ – Where is the ‘big picture’? I
am not assured But
I guess Council is (they discuss these things behind closed doors) Mere
mortals have to take their words for it – at least until the next election |
First Example – I will return with oterhs over the week
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December Budget
update given Council at Mondays meeting – clear as mud |
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To
left is Revenue received so far – thus airport ferry budgeted for 830T$ passenger
fares but actually about 849T$ -- when this was commented on at Council Pond
said number passengers up about 10%. Good news – but when if you look at
numbers you see (figure below) that in 2006 ‘we’ collected $903,143 – so looks
more like down 5%--- such is the weakness of presenting only one year data
--- More worrisome to me was the 17.3M$ ‘Fiscal Revenue’ – shades of 5.1M$ ‘logic
error’ |
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Balanced
budget means Revenue too |
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These
are from the Audits – using this hard to say where 17M$ from ‘Fiscal Revenue’
might be –has City received 4M$ taxes more this year than last? Perhaps Taxes
+ 6M$ found on page 34 of ‘5 year Financial Plan’ (= Budget)? You
see my point? It is very hard to check up on the numbers – either from the ‘summary’
(as given for December 2007 above) or from the Budget. Here
is another example: does the ‘Taxes’ include the pulp mill? Looks to me like
it does given 29M$ total How
about City West 2M$ dividend? Who knows? But
without that information how can we feel at ease that 5.1M$ ‘oversight’ has
been rectified? |
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Museum is
one to watch in 2008 City
wanted to cut back tax break for non-Museum spaces --- (too late – Bylaw already
passed) – but the ‘grant’ has not happened yet – Still it is all done in
camera – so we’ll probably never know |
Flying on Automatic Pilot?? |
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I
suspect this is the way Council does the budget – they look at what say
Tourism has received last year and the
year before and decide to give them similar this year (+ or -) what ever this
year total amount varies from 2007 --- so Tourism ‘gets’ 130T (the 2% hotel
tax) plus another 60T or so --- that is Automatic pilot – first Tourism need not get the 2% -- all it has to be is used
for Tourism promotion (big battle in Terrace last year over which promoter
would get the $) – I could see Visitor Center getting part of the $ (won’t
happen) |
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Using
Community grants as model |
Results based management
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As
was done in the (paltry) 113T$ grants doled out last week to Community Groups
from Council fund—Could ask tourism to meet certain ‘agreed upon’ results to
be reached by time they apply in 2009. I
have heard at least one Councillor advocating such a system – but again we,
mere Citizens, will not likely hear anything about it |
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More Later |
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Created by LG on 4/2/2008
Last updated on Monday, February 04, 2008