Transformative leadership needed at CBRM
No longer enough that councillors pound their fists and point their fingers when another depressing municipal budget is delivered.
Earlier this month, the Cape Breton Regional Municipality (CBRM) approved its 2018/2019 capital and operating budgets. While budgets can feel drier than a soda cracker first thing in the morning, they can also tell us a lot about our well-being and priorities. So, what does the 2018/19 budget tell us?
Mayor and council approved, by a vote of 7 to 6, a capital budget of $34 million. A few years prior, mayor and council created a policy to limit their ability to borrow money. As per this policy, CBRM can borrow up to 50 per cent of what it paid down on the debt in the prior year.
The passing of the 2018/2019 capital budget required that CBRM borrow $9,891,361 – slightly less than 100 per cent of last year’s debt payments – suggesting that perhaps we are too poor to have even debt repayment as a priority.
This budget, that also requires drawing $1.5 million from our capital reserve, repairs only 45 of 261 high-priority roads (including only one of 60 local roads) and turns down $3 million in requests for municipal contributions to community economic development initiatives.
Outside basic services (roads, vehicles and equipment, water and sewer, parks and grounds) the 2018/19 capital budget identifies three priorities: the East Division Police Station ($1.8 million), the Bayplex ($4.5 million), and the second berth ($10.5 million or 1/3 of the total capital budget).
If these are the only investments we can afford, are we confident that these projects herald an end to our difficulties? If not, what is the plan?
The 2018/19 operating budget is much the same. This $147 million budget shows a $2 million decrease in revenues from 2017/18. Compared to last year, we will spend less on street lights, recreation, parks, buildings and libraries.
We are unable to support the Highland Arts Theatre (despite the Creative Economy Growth Strategy we just paid for), the Cape Breton Partnership, the Pan Cape Breton Food Hub, the Whitney Pier Rink and the Glace Bay Heritage Museum.
We will increase our allowance for uncollectible taxes, substantially increase what we are spending to police our shrinking population, and increase wages and benefits, as per collective agreements, of 10 municipal departments.
While we will not, as we did with the capital budget, draw on reserves, this is more of an obligation than an accomplishment. In a 2017 issue paper, CFO Jennifer Campbell noted that “the Province of Nova Scotia Financial Conditions Index requires that municipalities retain an operating reserve equivalent to 10 per cent of their annual operating budget. Currently, CBRM’s operating reserve sits at 2.2 per cent.”
Like the capital budget, the operating budget does include some spending beyond basic services. If these are the items on which council will spend its entire Economic Development Grants, then by default (or in the absence of a more fulsome community conversation), these are our priorities: $287,000 for Business Cape Breton or its equivalent, $100,000 for the Savoy, and $80,000 for Destination Cape Breton.
Here again, if these are the only investments we can afford are we confident that these priorities (all carried over as is from 2017/18) will begin to turn things around? If not, what is the plan? Because, as bad as things are, they cannot come as a surprise to mayor and council.
The CBRM has been struggling for more than three decades. Between 1991 and 2016, the population of Cape Breton Island declined by 30,000 people. Each year, CBRM loses 1,000 of its tax payers, but garbage still has to be picked up on every street, plows still have to clean every street, and repair crews still have to fill holes on every street. Our revenues are shrinking faster than our expenditures. So, what is the plan?
It is telling that immigration does not appear anywhere in the budget. A provincial responsibility you say? Ah well, they probably have that in hand. Our schools are closing. Our commercial taxes are among the highest in the country. Our child poverty rate is shameful. And equalization doesn’t seem to be resolving itself. So, what is the plan?
It is no longer enough that councillors pound their fists and point their fingers when another depressing municipal budget – and one that doesn’t offer reason to believe that next year will be any different – is delivered.
Ours are problems that require strong, bold and unrelenting local leadership. They require that we accept our current reality, as much as we’d like to look away, that we speak the truth to those in power and to one another, and that we stop shutting down conversations about this difficult reality with accusations of negativity or empty promises that our windfall is just around the corner.
What might this strong, sustained, bold leadership in action look like? It might look like mayor and council agreeing on a set of priorities that will change the systems that do not benefit the CBRM. It might look like mayor and council making these priorities the basis of annual budgets prepared by staff
“Rock-bottom can be, if we choose it, a place of freedom, boldness and brilliant risk-taking.”
(and not the reverse whereby budgets prepared by staff dictate all that is possible). It might even look like CBRM reaching out to the community in setting these priorities.
It might then look like mayor and council proactively, collectively, and tangibly making progress on these priorities outside of budget sessions, and doing so, as needed, at the cost of partisan favour and personal advancement and even if it feels incommensurate with the pay or the assumed job description of council.
Budgets are not easy. The choices they involve make apparent our values, our aspirations and our desperation. Near-future budget deliberations in the CBRM are not going to be any easier. Could there be a silver lining in all of this? Perhaps. If we can accept that we’re nearing rock-bottom, then we can begin to let go of our old ways of seeing, and leading. Rock-bottom can be, if we chose it, a place of freedom, boldness and brilliant risk-taking.
And we needn’t look far to see strong and transformative leadership emerging from a place of exasperation. Because, interestingly, smack dab in the middle of one of the poorest municipalities in the country (CBRM), resides one of the most prosperous First Nations in the country (Membertou).
Membertou has had to overcome far greater legislative, provincial and federal obstacles than will ever face the CBRM, and yet they show us what is possible with committed local leadership, meaningfully community engagement, and a plan.