Dear Editor:
Experience and good judgement in budgeting is an exercise in the virtue of self restraint. You desire more stuff, services, experiences than you have resources (i.e. – money) so you budget. The same should be for governments.
Unfortunately very few Canadian federal, provincial, county and municipal governments have the resolve or inclination to practice real budgeting and to “Say no to whiners” (Jan. 18), as J. Alexander voiced in his letter.
It is so much easier to flog the tax donkey (citizens) with tax increases. Centre Wellington is the most blatant violator locally of abusing the taxpayer.
The new council of Centre Wellington has been successful in proving my concerns last year – that they needed perhaps help with budgeting from a new citizen finance committee. It seems the answer is “no way.”
They now know everything because they have been so successfully orientated by the staff on their job. Sadly, the orientation has proven to be very successful in de-emphasizing the primary job of council: oversight and accountability of senior staff and the CAO and that means budget restraint and saying no to staff desires.
This council has proven that orientation means ardently internalizing the commands of the staff and their hand-picked consultants. They will talk about how well they listen to all the stakeholders, developers, county, province, staff and a variety of assorted groups, but they have fundamentally neglected the major shareholders paying most of the bills. Now that’s dysfunctional.
Unfortunately, Centre Wellington council is not alone. In his interview (Watters reflects on first year in officer for all-new mayor, council, Jan. 4), Mayor Shawn Watters referred to the tired old election campaign canard of the previous council being dysfunctional. I think the mayor should look at himself and his council before casting stones at that old dead horse.
Making a suggestion of a 4.5% increase to staff at the beginning of the budget process is bad budgeting. You must have a firm goal and pass a motion forcing the staff to comply. Seeing your wishy-washy niceness, the staff ran you and your council over with a fully rationalized Mac truck budget of 7.35%.
Hopefully, your planning council does not mean planning to spend more money and budgeting accordingly to further abuse of the tax serfs.
Stephen Kitras,
Centre Wellington