The most important action that city council and staff can take during this year’s budget process is to produce an actual budget, not just throw numbers on a page and call it a budget.

Consider:

• The wages of city workers from their 2007 contract were cited as causing “serious financial issues” in the budget being prepared. Yet the contract sets out the wages and should have been considered and accounted for during any proper budgeting process.
• Of the roads in Abbotsford Mayor Peary stated “It’s so easy for councils to get into postponing roads as a way to balance budgets”. Playing a numbers game by deferring needed investments in roads is not “balancing the budget”. It is avoiding balancing the budget.
• Ignoring the hundreds of millions of dollars of investment that are needed for the water and sewer upgrades Abbotsford needs, is ignoring and avoiding reality it is not budgeting.
• Proper budgeting leads to solid costing and contracts that avoid going 50% over budget turning $85,000,000 projects into $130,000,000 projects.
• Part of budgeting is to properly account for and record all costs associated with projects, ensuring costs are not mislabel or mis-recorded giving a misleading picture of the actual total costs; preventing a realistic evaluation of the outcomes and leading to more poor decision making based on the incomplete costing of projects.
• Budgeting reflects reality; pie in the sky or unreasonably optimistic numbers while avoiding any consideration of numbers that reflect more realistic outcomes or possible negative outcomes is not budgeting.
• Budgeting does not ignore issues such as the lack of parking that is attached to a location and the effect such a lack of parking will have, such as happened with the Entertainment and Sports complex.
• Budgeting recognizes economic reality; it does not ignore that an economic downturn will have a serious negative effect on revenues.
• Budgeting recognizes that such revenue decreases require tight control over and reductions of spending.
• Budgeting not only considers revenue increases to balance the budget but also considers and finds expenditure (spending) reductions to balance the revenues = expenditures equation.

These are but highlights of the actions of council and staff that make it clear that what has been produced and called a budget for the City of Abbotsford has been far short of even minimal standards to be considered budgeting.

Any review of the actions and behaviours of Abbotsford city council and staff and the results of those actions and behaviours makes it clear that the only use (only purpose?) of the document produced and called a budget was in meeting the statutory requirement to produce a yearly/5 year budget.

Budgeting is a management and planning tool. It is not telling staff to produce a document that meets X requirements.

A budget is a financial plan. A municipal budget indicates the municipal government’s income sources and allocates funds to police, roads, parks and recreation, wages, fire and the like; it includes provisions for needed infrastructure improvements to water and sewage treatment, for the levels of road maintenance actually needed (as opposed to a convenient ‘fill’ number), it includes realistic revenue numbers – not last year plus y% increase in an economic meltdown

Fundamentally, the budgeting process is a method to improve operations; it is a continuous effort to specify what should be done to get the job completed in the best possible way. The budgeting process is a tool for obtaining the most productive and cost effective use of the city’s resources. Budgets also represent planning and control devices that enable city management and council to anticipate change and adapt to it.

Operations in today’s economic environment are complex. The budget (and control) process provides a better basis for understanding the city’s operations and for planning ahead. This increased understanding leads to faster reactions to developing events, increasing the city’s ability to perform effectively.

Budgeting is a most important financial tool – if done properly.

I propose that council and staff resolve to:

1. LISTEN to the feedback from taxpayers at the budget consultations, not just sit there, and use the good suggestions.
2. Go back to the beginning and generate a proper budget by following proper budgeting and accounting procedures.
3. Full disclosure on what revenues and expenditures are included in the budget, permitting the public to provide feedback on its priorities for spending.

While a radical change, investing time in proper budgeting would result in numerous fiscal benefits to Abbotsford and its taxpayers.

Mayor Peary is right that Abbotsford faces ‘serious’ financial issues; he is however totally wrong that these ‘serious’ financial issues are limited to 2010 or that these “serious’ financial issues are about revenue and expenditure and completely in error that a gas tax is either necessary or would address these ‘serious’ financial issues.

At its core it is not a matter of dollars and cents that has put the city in its current state of financial and infrastructure problems.

An examination of the evidence makes it clear that Abbotsford has nine serious financial issues.

If you have driven by the Abbotsford Recreation Centre you will have seen council’s latest flashy new toy, the multicoloured new electronic billboard that replaced the old, serviceable plain manual sign at a cost of many tens of thousands of taxpayer’s dollars.

I suppose that after they spent thousands of dollars for four flat, big screen televisions to display the admission rates it was simply to unsophisticated to have the old serviceable, plain manual outdoor billboard clashing with the fancy new big flat-screen TV’s.

Personally I preferred the old wall signs as it made changing admission fees more noticeable; which probably goes a long way to explaining the need to spend thousands of dollars on the televisions.

Obviously with all this flashy, costly new display hardware they had to spend the hundreds of dollars they did on replacing the perfectly serviceable old lane/lesson pool deck signs for signs with better graphics.

After all ARC is part of Parks and Recreation, a department that felt the need to spend over a hundred thousand dollars to purchase a used jungle gym. As a kids structure it is undoubtedly brightly coloured and so impossible for council or management to resist.

After council and management felt the need to splurge for ARC’s expensive but colourful and flashy new billboard it is hardly surprising council felt the needs to spend $1.2 million more than necessary for a score clock.

A few hundred here, a few thousand on this and tens of thousands on that; a hundred thousand on this ‘deal’, a million plus on bells, whistles and flashy bright lights for a scoreboard…

After a while all this unnecessary spending adds up to millions of taxpayer dollars.

Council’s ‘need’ for a gas tax is no different that the ‘need’ for money any shopaholic, addict has.

I ‘need’ a new car, a new computer, a flat screen plasma television … but as a financially responsible person I budget and set priorities.

It is council that has taken the city from being debt free a short two and a half years ago to being burdened with debt, still facing the need for major spending investments in infrastructure and with the mayor and council mounting a campaign to convince taxpayers that there is no choice but to raise taxes by $10 million a year – or more.

No it is not revenue and expenses that are the ‘serious’ financial issues that the City of Abbotsford  must deal with. Prudent budgeting and spending will resolve the city’s budget challenges.

The nine ‘serious’ financial issues that threaten Abbotsford are the mayor and council. Taxpayers really cannot do much about whether this state of affairs is a result of the mayor and council only caring about re-election or lack the ability for budgeting and fiscal discipline.

What we can do is demand council do more than pay lip service to the budgeting process. It is time taxpayers and council took a hard look at what money truly needs to be spent on and items that can be postponed or even forgone.

Any reasonable, responsible and prudent person looking over the numbers published by the city as justification for the need for large revenue increases in 2010 can easily find millions of dollars that do not ‘have’ to be spent.

It is clear that as part of ‘encouraging’ council to discharge its fiduciary duties in a responsible manner it is necessary to cut off what council and city management consider a bottomless well of money.

Taxpayers need to make it clear to Gordon Campbell, Bill Bennett and our local MLA’s that it is unacceptable for them to encourage Abbotsford’s councils spendthrift ways by granting them a gas tax.

Taxpayers also need to make clear to council, via e-mail or attending the budget meetings, the need for council to stop spend, spend, spend and exercise fiscal discipline as do taxpayers and other municipalities.