Category Archives: Municipal

Municipal

Only Abbotsford City Hall …

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What you should know concerning the above picture is that the times are not a special time set aside for couples or ‘Date Night’ time. The times cited are the existing times for the long established, often promoted and well advertized toonie ($2) swims; they are not any new program or promotion.

I have no idea what makes someone (or someones) with the city think that taking a date to the madhouse that is cheap/toonie swim is a good idea. Although I suppose it would make your dating life considerably less expensive since you would not be faced with the expense of a second or subsequent date(s).

Having the large poster, leaflets and other advertising materials produced is not inexpensive, a cost of thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.

Given that toonie swims are already well promoted and advertised, and assuming anyone is so injudicious as to think a crowded cheap swim is a good idea for a date, simple mathematics tells you that the cost of this new promotion will be significantly higher than any additional revenue generated from said new promotion.

I suppose in light of Abbotsford City Hall’s demonstrated lack of any mathematical skill and it’s proclivity to spend millions of dollars in order to ‘save’ taxpayers thousands of dollars, this kind of fiscally irresponsible behaviour is not out of character.

Still …… this campaign …… seems more like an excuse to pay someone for a ‘promotional campaign’. Makes one wonder who was paid to prepare the advertising materials and what their relationship to city hall, city council or the Abbotsford Heat is?

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Silly Season Open?

Under (sadly) the heading of more typical City behaviour I see that the lifeguards at the Abbotsford Rec Centre have been naughty and as a result will now have to bring their own personal towel to work.

It seems the lifeguards were not being diligent about making sure the supplied towels were getting washed and dried I a timely or consistent fashion. Behaviour not all that surprising considering many of the instructors are teenagers or UFV students.

Now I can think of several ways to ‘encourage’ or achieve compliance without the need of resorting to ‘if you don’t play the way I want I’m taking my toys (towels) and going home’ behaviour. Although, perhaps it is not all that surprising in light of numerous other examples of city staff and/or city council behaving more like a child rather than an adult.

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If you examine the special deal the city is offering on the date night promotion leaflet above you will see they are offering $2 off the regular admission price on Friday night at ARC; as a result of this you pay $3.85 (5.85 – 2.00) to get in on Friday under the City’s ‘special deal’.

If, instead of taking advantage of the ‘savings’ you waited until the Friday night $2 swim started you would avoid the $1.85 cost of the City ‘saving’ you money.

If it were not driving the City and taxpayers into bankruptcy territory it would be blackly humorous that even the smallest monetary ‘savings’ by the city results in citizens paying more than they would have without the city ‘saving’ them money.

Which is why, upon hearing words like “a deal, have we got a deal for you, savings, profit, on budget, good idea, a good plan” etc come out of the mouths of the mayor, city councillors or city staff, informed citizens:

1. are filled with foreboding and thoughts of ‘Not Again!”

2. place their hands in their pockets (purse) and take a very firm grip on their wallets.

3. say NO, loudly and firmly

4. urge their fellow citizens to “Just say NO!”

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Of course if someone at the city did have a good idea – say having recycling bins at the recreation centres so people who had no convenient way to recycle would have easy access and could recycle – someone at the city would probably come up with something that would negate the good idea.

Say – by putting the recycling bins behind a locked door.

Addiction, Federal, Issues, Municipal, Provincial

It is a BUSINESS.

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It is not about gangs and crime – it is about business.

Abbotsford Chief Constable Bob Rich’s statement at the recent gang forum in Abbotsford that one average-sized grow operation in the Fraser Valley can net a gang between $500,000 and $1 million a year underscores that above all else the illegal drug trade is not about gangs and crime but about BUSINESS.

Indeed the illegal drug trade is currently the big, highly profitable, international business whose operations and operating principles reflect pure unfettered capitalism. Indeed the illegal drug trade is more purely capitalistic than the legal drug trade.

Choosing to ignore the reality that the illegal drug trade is a business as the legal drug trade is, simply results in flawed public policy on the issues involved.

Consider that even though the cigarette business results in the death of one third of its users it continues to be profitable because, despite the negative health hazards (including death) people ignore the negative consequences and create a demand for cigarettes which the cigarette industry is happy to provide – corporate profit being more important to the business than the cost to people or society.

The alcohol industry also imposes heavy costs on users and society but again people ignore the negative consequences and create a demand which business is happy to provide – corporate profit being more important than the cost to people or society. Do not overlook the irony of the beer industry campaigning against California’s proposition 19 (legalize marijuana) to protect its profitability from a legal marijuana industry.

The financial services industry sold worthless paper to the public (and each other) all in the name of corporate profit, extravagant salaries and bonuses while ignoring the cost (in the end ¾ of a trillion dollar cost) to society and the disastrous cost that many individuals paid (bankruptcy and losing their homes).

Asbestos use is banned in 52 countries, including Canada. Yet the Canadian asbestos industry exports 200,000 tonnes of asbestos a year to developing countries and crusades to keep the substance off the international list of hazardous materials. These exports are killing people, giving them asbestosis, but what does that matter – it is profitable.

North America is dotted with toxic wastes sites; Abbotsford was stuck cleaning up a toxic waste site when the operators walked away after sucking all the profit out of the operation they could; illegal dumping of toxic waste continues to plaque the environment and governments – all in the pursuit of profit.

It is irrational to expect the illegal drug business to operate on principles, or lack of principles, any different than legal businesses – maximize profit at any cost.

It follows therefore, that to end the illegal drug trade requires taking the profit out of the business.

The cost of doing business must rise to a point it makes the business unprofitable or the cost of being in the business must rise to the point that no one wants to be employed in the business or the demand for the product must be reduced to the point that the costs of doing business are no longer covered.

Reality in the illegal drug business is the fixed nature of the demand (rising prices do not proportionally decrease demand) for the product (drugs). This results in an extremely elastic price; resulting in the price of the product rising to offset any increased costs of doing business and maintaining the high profit margins of the business.

More resources for the police, more success for the police simply drives the price of the product higher to cover the increase in costs, with the higher product prices resulting in increasing crime to cover the increased cost of drugs – a classic catch-22 situation.

The elastic nature of the price means that the cost of doing business cannot rise to the point of rendering the business of illegal drugs unprofitable.

The high profit margins, the decreased economic fairness/opportunity and the fact we have created a consumption society where individual’s worth is based not on the person but on the person’s possessions makes available an unlimited labour pool whose members are focused on attaining money/possessions at any cost. A labour pool to whom incarceration and other possible negative outcomes are simply part of the cost of doing business.

That as a society we have made human life the cheapest commodity on the planet and possessions the measure of a persons worth means that you can run all the ‘gang members are losers’ advertising campaigns one chooses – with the labour pool desperate for making big $$$$$ that our society has created, the illegal drug business will have no difficulty finding replacement and/or new employees.

The reality that you cannot render the illegal drug business unprofitable (or less than highly profitable) and that you cannot deny the business a ready supply of employees means that, in order to have any significant, long term effect on the illegal drug business you need to decrease demand to the point that the costs of doing business are no longer covered and/or the wages available are not sufficient to offset the costs of employment in the business.

Pouring ever more resources into police services, the courts and locking more and more people up for longer and longer periods will accomplish nothing except to steadily increase taxes (or fees, premiums, etc) and/or add substantially to the debt and/or force reductions in funding for other areas (healthcare, education).

An ironic twist is that cutting the social programs that governments consider soft or easy to cut will increase the demand for products supplied by the illegal drug business, resulting in increased costs far higher than any costs ‘saved’ through program cuts.

As Alcoholics Anonymous, an organization with a great deal of experience with addiction, says “Doing the same thing, the same way, over and over again and expecting a different result is insanity”.

Rather than learn and change what we are doing, governments, and far too many citizens, advocate spending more to do more of what isn’t working. Is that not insanity2?

This pointlessly insane and substantial resource wasting behaviour results from overlooking or ignoring the fact that whatever labels you choose to apply to the illegal drug trade, the trade is at its core a business.

In order to achieve positive desirable outcomes when dealing with this business, it is a MUST that policies reflect that it is a business.

It does not matter what we as a society believe or what we as a society want to be the case – an analysis of the illegal business reveals that the only effective approach that will make permanent, long term inroads in the illegal drug business is to focus our resources on reducing demand, getting customers of the business into recovery.

Analysis of illegal drugs as the business it is reveals that it is pointless insanity to continue to increase the resources we waste on current policies.

Reducing demand is the only approach that will reduce the illegal drug business by reducing demand.

[‘Only approach’ short of fundamentally changing the nature of the business through legalization; an approach that, no matter how rational, is unlikely to occur until current policies inflict so much financial cost, financial pain (and that point will come), that no other option is left but legalization.]

Unfortunately demand reduction, requiring patience, commitment and time, is not the fast, easy, miracle solution governments and citizens want.

Meaning both the problem and waste of resources will continue to grow, until financial pain forces policy change.

Addiction, Federal, Municipal, Provincial

“And how will you be paying for that?”

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The interesting thing about reading and watching the reporting on the Abbotsford town hall meeting was not what speakers such as Abbotsford’s Chief Constable Bob Rich or Ed Schellenberg’s brother-in-law Steve Brown had to say, nor the comments and statements from the public – it has been said before in other forums on crime and will be repeated again and again at future public forums on crime, often by the same people.

When boiled down the refrain from speaker after speaker was – more, more, more, more, more, more ……

The 800 pound gorilla that only one group raised and that everyone else ignored and/or failed to address, the 800 pound gorilla that renders all comments, statements and calls for action moot without it being addressed, is $$$$$$$. How are we going to pay for the more, more, more, more, more, more ……?

During Abbotsford’s budget process for the coming fiscal year a fiscal reality facing the City of Abbotsford is that leaving the funding for the Abbotsford Police Department (APD) at the same level as last year would necessitate cuts to the APD.

In order to just maintain the APD at the same level of operations as this year’s level will require an increase in the APD budget. Increasing the activities of the APD would require an even larger increase to the APD’s budget.

Increases to the APD budget are not measured in just the increased in property taxes; it is important to consider the costs to other city services that are forgone or cut to fund the APD budget appetite for yearly funding increases.

The Abbotsford Fire Department is undermanned for a city the size of Abbotsford. Yet the hiring of new firefighters is on indefinite hold because of the voracious appetite the APD (and the other lower mainland police departments) have for increases in funding.

Recall that in Vancouver, and other metro Vancouver cities, cuts were made to the staff and equipment of fire departments in order to have money to meet increase police funding needs.

At what point will the need to decrease the investment in fire departments to fund increases to police departments result in significant increases in fire losses and the cost of fire insurance?

It is not just the fire departments; cuts will need to be made across the board on city services to avoid large property tax increases – all to meet the increasingly voracious appetite of police services.

Cuts that will be required year after year as police costs devour an ever increasing percentage of city budgets.

And police costs are the cheap part.

Faster court processes, more trials, less plea bargains and more incarceration – these all require significant increases in resources both provincially and federally – resources that come at substantial cost.

The federal conservatives speak of spending $9 BILLION to build new prisons. And building the prisons is the cheap part. Operating the prisons is the costly part of increasing the prison space in the country, requiring as it will year after year after year of increasing expenditures.

Interestingly, at a time the federal Conservatives are speaking of the need to incarcerate ever increasing numbers of people, the conservative government has made cuts to the current years Corrections Canada’s budget. If the government finds it necessary to reduce the costs associated with the current levels of incarceration – just how do they propose to fund the ever increasing costs associated with increasing levels of incarceration?

The sizable funding increases needed to pay for substantial increases in incarceration levels have to be paid for somehow.

How will you choose to pay for increasing levels of incarceration – large tax increases to provide the $billions needed to fund this course of action OR do we fund the $billions needed through major cuts to healthcare and other programs?

Realistically healthcare and to a lesser degree education, are the only budget areas with sufficient funds to begin to offset the costs of a policy of incarcerate, incarcerate, incarcerate. Indeed, given that healthcare costs are consuming an ever increasing percentage of provincial budgets (threatening, at least mathematically, to require 100% of provincial budgets) and that a policy of ever increasing levels of incarceration will consume ever increasing levels of future provincial and federal budgets (unless taxpayers are willing to pay annual tax increases to cover the costs of incarceration) then at some point a decision, a choice, will be required between funding healthcare or funding the incarceration of increasing numbers of people.

“Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors are destined to repeat them.” George Santayana

The only thing that kept the state of California from bankruptcy was the fact it was a government. The main driver of California’s budgetary debacle was its policy of incarceration, incarceration, incarceration and the prohibitive costs associated with that policy. Addressing California’s budget crisis is why governor Schwarzenegger proposed legalizing marijuana.

The state of New York recognized and publically acknowledged it too was on a path where, without massive tax increases, all the state’s budget would soon be spent on the policy of incarcerate, incarcerate, and incarcerate. New York State chose to back away from incarceration in order to avoid a financial/budgetary disaster.

Smaller states had already found that they could not afford to pursue a policy of incarceration, incarceration, incarceration and abandoned policies that require ever increasing levels of incarceration.

It would be … to be blunt … STUPID to waste resources, in particular the resource of time, to follow a policy that simple mathematics and results of following the policy in other political jurisdictions demonstrate to be economically unfeasible to the point of budgetary meltdown.

Abbotsford, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada cannot afford the massive waste of resources that being unwilling to learn from the experience of other jurisdictions who pursued policies of incarcerate, incarcerate, incarcerate – simply because they do not want to hear evidence that makes clear that giving into the desire for vengeance by incarcerating more and more people for longer and longer periods of time is financial and budgetary suicide.

We simply cannot afford to act like children, refusing to acknowledge what the cost of pursuing a policy of incarceration will be because we do not want to hear anything that would interfere with doing what we want to do – lock ever increasing numbers of people up.

Unless of course increased taxes, decreased healthcare and other services while dealing with continued increases in mental health, addiction and the crime associated with these health/social issues is what citizens and politicians are seeking to achieve?

The truth, unpalatable as it may be to many, is that as a society we lack the resources to continue to pursue policies that are ineffective simply because they are based on what people believe to be, or want to be, true.

Truthfully, we can no longer afford to pursue policies that are ineffectual period; our decreasing resources dictate pursuing policies based on effectiveness not on palatability or “but I want to”.