Category Archives: Caveat emptor

Caveat emptor, Consider, Municipal

I cannot afford to subsidize Heat ownersip

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The first item I got when I moved to Abbotsford was a Library Card.

The second item was a pool pass as I have a bad back and it is either swim regularly or endure periods of crippling pain, an inability to walk and being bed ridden. Needless to say I am highly motivated to swim five or six times a week. It was seven but my old joints need at least one day a week to recuperate.

During the following two decades I have always held a pool pass. A string that will end when my current pass expires because Abbotsford city council has chosen to push the cost of using city recreational amenities beyond what many citizens can afford.

My back requires me to swim if I want to remain mobile and at a pain level that does not require the use of addictive medications such as morphine to manage the pain. So I will be swimming.

My swimming also significantly benefits the taxpayer’s pocketbook by avoiding the costs of the expensive medical services that would result from the back problems associated with the physical consequences of not swimming.

There are two courses of action I can take and will be exploring.

The first is to swim only during the times, the very limited times, of ‘cheap swims’ when the admission price is much more affordable. That limits me to a maximum of four one hour long swims a week, the minimum I need to swim to benefit from swimming. It also means that swimming becomes a ‘cannot miss’ item on my schedule as opposed to the timing flexibility of a pass.

The other option is to check out the private facilities that have pools to see if their pools will meet my needs vis-à-vis swimming lengths. Private facilities because under Abbotsford’s current council’s mismanagement the city’s public facilities are the most expensive facilities in town.

I am sure that someone from city council or management will state that the city gives a credit to those citizens who living (well) below the poverty line; that the city raised the credit by 50% this year. Ignoring or obscuring the fact that it would have taken a 120% increase just to cover the 20% increase in ARC admission fees this year.

Actually, if you factor in the double digit increase that resulted from the two price increases the year before, the cost to use ARC has gone up 35% over the past 18 months.

In order to merely stay even the recreation credit needed to increase by 195%, four times the actual 50% increase. Leaving those who can least afford to pay increased fees significantly worse off than they were just 18 months ago.

Now if I could afford to go to UFV my UFV U-PASS would get me unlimited access to Abbotsford recreational facilities. What does the city collect for this access? $5 per term!

For the same four month period that the city collects $5 per student they charge me $200 – 4000% more. Where is Mayor Peary’s ‘user pay’ or fairness here?

As if having those living in poverty subsidize UFV students was not insulting or outrageous enough, there is the matter of subsidizing a professional hockey team and ownership – the Heat.

It is not only those who struggle to survive living in poverty who cannot afford to attend events at AESC. The working poor, indeed many working families period, cannot afford to attend events at AESC.

Yet we all pay to subsidize ever posterior in a seat at AESC when we use city facilities.

Council constantly cites the need to provide public amenities to attract people to Abbotsford.

Yet, while the city has added the Plan A amenities for those wealthy enough to afford them, it has imposed fee increases across the board at public facilities that deny and/or significantly reduce access to ALL facilities for a substantial percentage of Abbotsford’s citizens.

The purpose of public facilities is to provide public amenities and access to those facilities for ALL citizens, particularly families and children, not just a privileged few. The purpose is NOT to provide cash flow to pay for council’s lack of fiscal acumen and common sense.

Public facilities fees should be the lowest (or at worst among the lowest) in the city in order to maximize public access to and use of facilities. Public facilities fees should not be the highest, thus minimizing public access to facilities and participation in recreational activities.

Caveat emptor, Consider, Issues, Provincial

The Tale of a friend, crippling pain and Fraser Un-Health.

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I have a homeless friend I first met shortly after finding myself living on the streets of Abbotsford.

For a period we were among those sharing a pod and both found ourselves returned to living on the streets close to the same point in time and through the same agency, although on different grounds.

I was able to find housing in a couple of months, whereas he has been homeless ever since that point in time.

About three weeks ago I was giving him a bad time about getting old after he hurt his back getting up that morning. His back continued to bother him until one morning a week and a half ago he found himself unable to move or get to his feet.

Late on the second day of being incapacitated and having no water he dragged himself to the road were someone saw him and called the Abbotsford police. Who arrived and asked him if he had been hit by a car (no) or if he was so intoxicated he could not stand (no). Upon explaining about his being crippled by his back the officers called him an ambulance.

At which time he began a close encounter of the unprofessional kind with ‘The Attitude’ that the homeless and too many other powerless sub-groups are treated with by emergency medical staff in Abbotsford.

The Abbotsford ambulance crew expressed … let’s say skepticism… as to his claim of not being an addict. Further, when he said he had not been taken to the hospital by ambulance anytime recently, one of the ambulance attendants insisted he had taken him to the hospital just weeks before.

His treatment did not improve upon arrival at the new Regional Hospital  in Abbotsford, where once again the fact he was homeless automatically made him an addict, despite his statements about not having an addiction.

When my friend suggested that labelling him an addict, assuming that he was there to abuse the medical system and that he was there for some reason other than his back was causing him crippling pain was not the way staff should be acting, he was subjected to ‘who are you (a nobody) what have you done with your life (nothing)’ attitude and behaviours.

I am sure that I am not the only one who has had the experience of having a doctor tell you that they cannot find any evidence of a back problem, while you were lying there in agony.

So – anyone surprised the doctor didn’t find any evidence of a back problem when he, the doctor, had decided my friend was a homeless addict who was lying about his addiction and about why he was at the hospital? Me neither.

Most British Columbians, myself included, labour under the impression hospitals are there to provide health care to British Columbians who find themselves in need to 24 hour bed rest and health care. Apparently we are mistaken.

Hospital staff gave him a shot and shipped him off, still unable to move and in agony, to the Salvation Army – which has no facilities or capacity to provide 24 hour bed care for someone. Of course since he could not walk they were forced to call a taxi to have him carted off the premises. Talk about a bums rush!

Fortunately for my friend on his way to, but before he found himself stranded helplessly at the Salvation Army, he spotted his brother who got him to his (the brother’s) place.

Of course since he was an addict and would either abuse or sell any medication he was given, he was sent off without medication or any prescription for medication. As a result of which he got to spend a week unable to move and in a great deal of pain.

The reason I started with the background of how long I have know my friend is so that I can state: that he does not use drugs or alcohol; that his last ambulance trip to the hospital was thirty years ago after a car accident; that if he says his back is causing crippling pain – it is causing crippling pain.

My friend was treated with the usual (unacceptable) lack of respect and professionalism that is standard operating procedure for treatment of the homeless. That’s just a fact of life for the homeless in Abbotsford.

However, his treatment goes beyond the normal standard lack of professionalism into bad health care or as the French would say Mal-practice.

Caveat emptor, Municipal, Snafu

Another Abbotsford Fudge-a-Budget

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Fudge: to avoid coming to grips with something

One has to wonder why city council bothers with a budget or if they would bother with a ‘budget’ if it were not required by the province of BC’s Local Government Act.

While council pays lip service to creating a ‘budget’ this year’s fudget (council’s fudge-a-budget) process has made it unequivocally clear that the needs of the city, Reality, fiscally responsibility and common sense were of minimal (if any) concern to council in arriving at 2010’s fudget-it-budget.

Council’s behaviour, directions to staff and staff’s report highlight that council’s focus is on creating a fudge-it-budget that isn’t going to jeopardize their chances of re-election.

Financial staff’s original draft for 2010 was for a 6% increase but council directed financial staff to come up with an increase closer to 3.9% which led to the 4.4% proposal accepted by council, excerpted below.

“The capital budget (which they describe in their report as “already significantly underfunded”) did not increase in 2009 and the roads and facility infrastructure continue to deteriorate. A one per cent increase is not significant, but acknowledges the growing gap in infrastructure funding,” they wrote.

The authors noted several challenges in trying to meet the council’s directive: the fragility of the roads and capital projects program; an underfunded reserve fund.

Fire services would take a significant hit of $350,000 in 2010. 2010 marks the fifth year in a row where increase will be below city costs, they said.

Continue to deteriorate, as in this is not the first year that council has made the decision to allow roads and facility infrastructure to deteriorate.

At what point would council find it necessary to stop allowing roads and facilities to deteriorate and begin proper maintenance? When cars start disappearing into potholes? When we get a head-on collision because drivers cannot see the road marking lines in the dark or rain? When facilities have to be closed because they are unsafe or buildings start falling down.

Council happily spends money on plasma flat screen televisions and on an unnecessarily, expensive large, colour electronic outdoor sign for ARC but won’t spend to do the maintenance necessary to maintain ARC and other facilities.

Money isn’t spent until the lack of maintenance causes a breakdown, such as an ice-plant, where it costs many times more to do repairs than it would have cost to do maintenance; standard operating procedure under Abbotsford’s council.

Fragile is not a word one wants used in describing roads and capital projects. Still that is better than underfunded in reference to the city’s reserve fund; which is preferable to hearing about the growing gap in infrastructure funding.

Council opted for a significant hit to Fire services despite the danger of lengthened response times and increased property losses. Given the gamble with lives and property in that decision one wonders why councillors are opposed to a casino. Or is it just taxpayers money, property and lives council likes to gamble with?

Sneaky – an increased turnaround time for development applications will have developers going to other cities and council won’t have to add any meetings to handle increased city business.

The need for early closure of some recreation facilities and/or reductions in programming will cause less wear and tear on buildings so the lack of maintenance won’t be as noticeable or potentially costly.

Reduced responsiveness to citizens as a result of reduced staff means council and senior staff won’t be bothered by citizens as much and provides an excuse for avoiding/not answering citizen’s questions.

With the existing poor levels of park maintenance who will notice increased litter or grass several inches longer?

A reduced ability to repair potholes and intersection rutting should serve to provide a distraction to divert driver’s attention from the inexcusable deteriorating roads to the “we’re keeping taxes down” potholes and rutting. Of course this policy could prove costly if citizen’s start billing city hall for the cost of tires and suspensions ‘deteriorated’ by the city’s deteriorated roads.

Even the most cursory examination of the 2010 ‘budget’ process/proposal makes it abundantly clear that council is aware of numerous failings of their so-called ‘budget’ – and chooses to avoid dealing with the many financial, operating and capital problems that have come to plague the City of Abbotsford precisely because of councils repeated refusal to behave with fiscal responsibility, make tough decisions and/or deal with the fallout from their poor financial decision making and priorities.

Phone council, write them, talk to them prior to their secret budget meeting on January 4, 2010 and ask councillors where the city’s portion of the McCallum ($8.3 million) and Clearbrook ($8.3 million) interchanges ($16.6 million in total) is going to come from since it was not included in the budget.

Tell council to stop digging Abbotsford into an ever deeper financial hole and demand council act responsibility in beginning to address the chaos council has caused the city, its finances and its taxpayers.