NATURE

Sea, land, river

PEOPLES

Community

For earlier materials see Table of Contents

May 5^th	Another look at Budget
	‘Business as Usual’

With a new Council I have hoped that City would become more open, accountable and more effective

So far looks like hope misplaced

Budgets set the tone for the year --- and this one uses last year as template

Theme: Flying on Automatic Pilot??

As I said last year—budgeting under Howie and Rodin looks like you take last year’s Budget line item and decide upon change or not --- but this info is never shown public – nor even discussed in public --- instead the items are lumped into much larger units and the synthesis is shown to public --- and comparisons like the PRDN 2007 left are no longer possible --- though some items like RCMP are still traceable--

I will add links later	Traceable? Good luck
	Administration not only seems to fly on automatic pilot (cloaked in secrecy of in-camera meetings) but it ‘changes its mind’ as it goes – making its documents almost unusable for comparisons --- thus the 2007 budget had to be revised later in year because of 5.1M$ ‘logical error’ ----- and the 2008 budget series had to be revised (‘amended’) in November 2008—I bet same will happen in 2009.

For example

Image left is from the amended 2008 budget --- use the RCMP for example – in 2009 Budget = 3,992,000, in original 2008 it was 3,728,591 (and amended to $3,891,000)

In 2007 originally $3,649,941 and was actual of only $3,053,343

You get my drift – what are we to compare?

I suggest the only reliable and consistent format for comparison is the audited statements --- as I did here

	Danger signals
	In what public discussion there was of the 2009 budget it was said the Community Partner group (presumably now called ‘other organizations’) and budgeted at $1,598,000 would have to be cut in future --- But when we are given no details it makes rational public discussion impossible ---

I am perhaps being unfair and will return to this using Five Year Plans from Cities current financials

Some Links to previous budget stories

My earliest – from 1996 when revenue still impressive 12,965,554

A retro look at 2005 with Lucky leaving and Jim Bruce arriving

2006 Budget1 where Museum loan and Cruise ship dock etc

And here where Grants in Aid discussed

In 2007 Jim Bruce very helpful giving me work sheets etc thus Budget 1 and especially Budget 2 – passed Budget meeting and good comparisons to previous rates

I will do 2008 etc later but in meanwhile here is another tax rate comparison page using BC data

Created by LG on 5/5/2009

Last updated on Tuesday, May 05, 2009

NATURE

PEOPLES

For earlier materials see Table of Contents

Another look at Budget

Some Links to previous budget stories