Category Archives: The Issues

Finances, Municipal, Snafu

Insult to Insult to Injury

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Over the years many people have compliment me on my willpower for my dedication in swimming 5 – 6 days a week. The truth is that it is not so much willpower or dedication as it is being highly motivated. 

As the years have accumulated all the contact sports, injuries etc have come home to roost with a vengeance. To maximize, to maintain, mobility and minimize pain I need to swim those 5 -6 days a week.

Which is why the sizable surcharge imposed on the users of the Abbotsford Recreation Centre (and the City’s other facilities) to pay the multi-million dollar subsidy for a professional hockey team and a multi-million dollar subsidy to the well connected members of the Heat ownership group is so painful both as a citizen of Abbotsford and physically.

The surcharges have pushed the cost of a pass for ARC from affordable (with planning and frugality) to out of reach for the best part of Abbotsford’s citizens – as well as propelling the cost of using public facilities well past the cost of using private facilities. Only in Abbotsford would you end up with the public facilities affordable only for the well-to-do and the private facilities affordable to the general public.

The reason I have not followed so many others to the private recreation facilities is that I am a length swimmer and it is only the public facilities that permit 25 metre lengths.

The limitations on swimming imposed by being able to afford to swim only during toonie swim times means that since pool fees moved into the stratosphere my mobility has been decreasing and my pain levels have been increasing.

Struggling stiffly, slowly and painfully up to start the day serves as a daily reminder of city council’s practice of serving the needs of council’s egos rather than the needs of the taxpayers – with the notable exception of well connected taxpayers.

Adding insult to the injury of the usurious surcharge is the decision to abuse perfectly fine walls with paint to caricature a mural – as opposed to using the money frittered away on the mural to keep the cost of admission less extortionate.

A mural that seems to have a great deal in common with a Rorschach inkblot adds yet another layer of insult. Filling balloons with paint and having patrons throw them at the walls would have gotten much the same look, at a negligible cost.

Council, in typical council fashion, painted murals in a building where the cost of painting the murals pushes the admission cost up leaving people unable to afford to use the facility and see the murals.

The purpose of public facilities is not to fritter away money on murals or to provide funds to provide multi-million dollar subsidies to/for a facility for a professional hockey team or to provide multi-million dollar subsidies for an ownership group to buy themselves (themselves – not the city that is paying the subsidies) a professional hockey team.

The purpose of public recreation facilities is to provide amenities that all citizens can afford to access.

Consider, Federal

Lybia

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The media coverage of the HMCS Vancouver setting sail to Libyan waters to relieve HMCS Charlottetown, which has been in action off the Libyan coast since March, underscores Mr Harper and his Conservatives lack of an ethical base.

Mr Harper justified the involvement of the Canadian military in Libya by stating that the Canadian military was there to ‘protect the Libyan people from Mr Gaddafi.

According to Mr Harper Mr Gaddafi killing citizens of Libya is such a grievous offence that military intervention by countries from around the world is required to put an end to this killing.

Conversely Mr Harper is perfectly fine with Canadian business (with the approval and support of the Canadian government) to kill Libyans and citizens of any other country by exporting asbestos – a substance whose use is banned in Canada because it causes death, cancer and asbestosis – profiting from the export of death.

Obviously Mr Gaddafi’s mistake was that he should have used Canadian asbestos to kill his victims; Mr Gaddafi’s sin lay in his failure to contribute to the profitability of the Quebec asbestos exports and thus to the electability of Mr Harper’s Conservatives in the province of Quebec.

Municipal, Snafu

AESC Economic Impact Report

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Not really surprising that with an election only a few months away the mayor and council felt the need for an economic impact study on the AESC.

After all, with the AESC’s appetite for consuming taxpayer dollars, its multi-million dollar subsidy to a professional hockey team, its multi-million dollars subsidy for well connected local citizens to buy themselves said professional hockey team and the consequences of council’s decisions driving property taxes, facility admission costs, field rentals and other city fees and charges into the stratosphere – mayor and council were desperate for something – anything – that would allow them to claim the AESC was in some way good for the community.

In exchange for pouring tens of thousands more taxpayer dollars into the AESC’s black hole, mayor and council got a report with numbers they could point to and claim the AESC was positive for the community.

Of course……given that the methodology used to calculate the economic impact made it impossible not to get numbers that could be claimed to be positive, while ensuring no negative impacts would be recognized……means the report is meaningless in terms of assessing the impact of the AESC on Abbotsford.

Not much of a surprise that paying big bucks for an impact report resulted in the use of methodology that served mayor and council’s need for numbers that obscure and/or ignore actual impacts.

Methodology that resulted in an increase in economic impact in this second impact report on the AESC, over the first report prepared before the AESC opened.

Despite the fact that none of the promises made by council as to the financial performance of the AESC has materialized economic impact increased. Which is what happens when you use ‘multipliers’ to calculate economic impact – the higher the expenditure you apply the multiplier to, the larger the economic impact becomes.

In other words – the bigger a disaster, the more of a money sucking black hole the AESC becomes, the higher the number for economic impact becomes.

As to the report’s claim of the creation of 305 FTE jobs, the report did include the information that FTE jobs meant full time equivalent jobs.

What the report did not include was information on how the number 305 was arrived at. From the information contained in the report the number 305 appears to have been plucked out of thin air.

Even if 305 could be supported, what full time equivalent jobs means if that a lot of different people got a few hours of work here and a few hours of work there. As anyone who is looking for work or trying to survive in Abbotsford can tell you what is needed in Abbotsford is not full time equivalent jobs but full time jobs paying wages sufficient to live on.

Another non-surprise concerning the report is that the City’s news release as well as Mayor Peary’s comments omitted to note or draw the attention of taxpayers to the $15,208,000 Abbotsford portion of total AESC expenditures.

Or that – since if you read the report on economic impact you would discover the methodology used, the lack of any support for the claimed 305 FTE jobs and the $15,208,000 Abbotsford portion of total AESC expenditures – if you wanted to read the report it was not easily available on the City’s web site but required on to request a copy of the report from city hall.

Finally concerning mayor Peary’s statement “The critics of the sports centre either don’t understand, or choose not to understand, that there are some benefits.”

The question is not whether there are some benefits to the centre, obviously the ownership group and their businesses derive substantial benefits from the centre and from the pocketbooks of Abbotsford’s beleaguered taxpayers.

The question is about a) the benefits that the taxpayers should receive for their $15,208,000 portion of total AESC expenditures and b) how anyone with common sense, an understanding of fiscal reality and who behaves in a fiscally responsible manner could or would be expected to place any value on the expensive drivel contained in this new report on the economic impact of the AESC.