Council needs a better way to determine its budget

My son rode his bike through the Dougall Death Trap.

He wanted to play Pokemon Go. We live in South Windsor. He wanted to play in Jackson Park. To get there, he had to go through the Dougall Death Trap. I flipped. He’s forbidden from riding his bike there again. We drive him.

Think about that. We told a kid not to ride his bike to the park. Does that make sense?

City councillors just voted to attempt a ninth consecutive tax freeze next year. Instead, they should ask: what does Windsor need? A lot of people would say it needs a lot of things, including a safe way for pedestrians and cyclists to traverse that infamous stretch of Dougall Avenue, a gateway to the city and downtown.

I’m not necessarily saying raise taxes. I pay those taxes, too. I’m saying consider the big picture.

Do we need more services? Do we need more or better infrastructure or amenities? What do we want? What do we need to attract investment and people?

“Once you start answering that question,” said Coun. Bill Marra, “you can decide how you allocate resources.”

We can freeze taxes every year, said Coun. Rino Bortolin, “but is that really an achievement?” he asked. “Are people really happy about it?”

We’ve done much — record spending on roads and sewers, a new community centre, libraries and pools. Though if we’re honest, we’ve closed other community centres and pools to pay for some of these. We’ve also replaced city jobs with cheap labour.

But much more is needed, and they’re not extras. Fixing the Dougall Death Trap will cost $5.3 million.

There’s a $1.2-million deficit in public housing for the 20 per cent of residents who are poor.

Almost 3,000 families were waiting for a place to live last year. They’ll wait an average of almost two years.

It takes two buses and almost two and a half hours to go from South Windsor to the east end. We spend about $8.50 per capita less on our libraries than the rest of Ontario. We can’t afford to properly care for both our signature parks and neighbourhood parks. If we paid for bulk garbage collection, like many cities, we wouldn’t have ratty couches littering our alleys. We want bike sharing, but we need better bike lanes.

City administrators will be “encouraged” to recommend improvements despite being asked for a tax freeze, a council report states. But, admitted CAO Onorio Colucci, “that list certainly would be longer if we were willing to accept modest increases. If you’re going to want to keep tax increases at zero, there are a limited number of enhancement opportunities.”

A tax freeze often actually means a spending cut. Simply maintaining existing services costs $10 million to $15 million a year more because of increases like salaries and inflation. So city departments have been asked again to cut their budgets 10 per cent.

“A significant negative impact on the city,” a council report last year warned about cuts. A choice between “rationalization of services and a general degradation of all services,” it stated. Administrators recommended a 1.75 per cent tax increase and urged council to put $1.5 million in cuts back in the budget.

There are new challenges and opportunities every year, Colucci said this year.

“Sometimes we surprise ourselves,” he said.

Privately, there’s a different assessment. There will be “blood on the floor,” I was told.

And there’s concern it will be poorer neighbourhoods that suffer, like downtown and the west end, where the city has closed a community centre and pool and tried to close more.

While we’re being honest, it’s not much of a tax freeze because local electricity and water rates, bus fares and business licence fees are all increasing.

The real issue is that after eight years of vaunted tax freezes, some councillors won’t be caught dead acknowledging they need to raise taxes.

Council also needs a better way to determine its budget. It’s the biggest thing local government does.

It’s more than three-quarters of a billion dollars, and it sets the agenda for the year. Typically, councillors and the public receive the draft — four tomes totalling 1,000 pages — and politicians vote at one marathon meeting two weeks later.

Already, council has requested that departments release their recommendations in late October or early November this year, in time for ward meetings so people can discuss them with their councillors.

“I’d like to see all those submissions and have some frank discussion,” said Coun. Jo-Anne Gignac.

“The earlier we can start the conversation with the public, the better.”

Bortolin also wants at least two budget meetings, instead of one marathon meeting.

“Not for us. It’s for the residents. There are people who waited 10 hours to speak,” he said, referring to last year. “Seven left.”

But councillors need it, too. Half of them unknowingly voted to reinstate sidewalk café fees last year after they had already waived them.

These meetings shouldn’t start in the middle of the day, either, when people who might want to address council are working.

And here’s a tradition that should end: multimillion-dollar “enhanced” capital budgets from the mayor, introduced at the end of the meetings. They’re not planned or scheduled, and there’s no public consultation. Most councillors haven’t even seen them.

Said Marra: “That’s a fair criticism.”