Dear Editor:
At the 2023 budget meeting for Centre Wellington, I presented a proposal for a public advisory finance committee and suggestions to reduce taxes, but your coverage of this was incomplete.
I submitted a written portion and live presentation as a delegation.
You didn’t give coverage to the reasons for and against my proposal and one of the suggestions for reducing the budget, which was also not addressed by the CAO and the “nice” council of Centre Wellington.
The reasons for forming the committee were:
– inexperience of the “nice” councillors of Centre Wellington;
– that public engagement was late and should be early in the process;
– the need for economic diversity membership on the committee from, lower income, unemployed, fixed income elderly, participants of the food bank and the working poor that cannot afford housing rent or ownership;
– the need for rural and agriculture membership and input, because they are usually burdened with the lions share of crumbling infrastructure and poor roads; and
– to help with cost accounting expertise that could result in better and deeper questioning of assumptions and inputs and therefore better public engagement for a better budget.
The committee idea was rejected by staff because it’s never done before and it would take too much time and work for staff.
These are poor reasons. The “nice,” compliant council of Centre Wellington agreed totally with the staff even though they asked no questions of me for clarification when I was a delegate.
Secondly, I recommended using the building reserve funds to pay for 25 to 50% of salaries for the ever-growing building department. The CAO ignored this proposal. The “nice” council and mayor did not listen to me as a delegation and missed this suggestion for lowering taxes. Finally, this newspaper missed mentioning it also. Too bad we now have to pay higher taxes when the economy is in distress and interest rates will go up further.
Lastly, since this has been rejected by council, I think it is timely to start a Centre Wellington Rate and Tax Payer’s Association. Please contact me if you are interested in participating in this association.
Stephen Kitras,
West Montrose