Monthly Archives: November 2009

Municipal, Snafu

Re: Abotsford Budget Consultations

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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.

Issues, Provincial

‘Assistance to Shelter Act’ makes this Remembrance Day a Day of Shame in BC

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November 11th is Remembrance Day in Canada; a result of November 11th being the date the Armistice ending World War I was signed. It is the day Canadians commemorate the sacrifices of members of the armed forces and of civilians in times of war or conflict.

It is the day we remember those who served, fought, bled and died to preserve the freedom of Canada  and Canadians to make their own choices and decisions.

A Day of Shame in British Columbia  this year as a result of the BC government’s introduction of the ‘Assistance to Shelter Act’ – an act written to strip freedom of choice from the a specific group of citizens – the Homeless.

This shameful Act is made more shameful, more intolerable, by virtue of the fact that it is for the purpose of enabling the BC government to remove the homeless from areas of high visibility and relocate them to less visible or embarrassing locations during the 2010 Winter Olympics.

The logic of seeking to avoid the embarrassment of having the homeless visible to the international community during the Olympics through the criminal violation of internationally recognized human rights escapes me.

Unless the government of BC expects the international community to be bamboozled by claims that the government’s action is about providing shelter from the weather for the homeless, when the actions of the government demonstrate the lack of any true concern about whether the homeless are sheltered from the weather or not.

If the BC government was concerned about the homeless being sheltered from inclement weather, the government would not be appealing the Adams  ruling which found that people have a right to erect their own temporary shelter to protect themselves.

The case was not blanket permission for the homeless to erect temporary shelters but rested on the fact that the number of people who are homeless in Victoria far exceed the number of available shelter beds.

Thus a government that was truly concerned about sheltering the homeless would not be seeking to prevent the homeless erecting shelter, but would instead seek to resolve the issue of homeless camps by providing shelter beds and appropriate housing.

Instead the BC government will empower police to use force to remove the homeless from the streets, ignoring the inconvenient fact that there more homeless that there are shelter beds.

To ensure that the government can have the police remove the homeless from sight during a specific time period of their choosing, the Act gives the Minister the power to issue an extreme weather alert. As opposed to the situation currently, where the calling of an extreme weather alert is in the hands of individual representatives in each community.

The minister and the BC government have claimed that this Act, violating the human rights of the homeless, is necessary “for their own good” and is NOT simply a tool to “sweep the homeless under the carpet” and remove them from sight during the Olympics.

Even if the actions of the BC government supported (which they clearly do not) the BC governments claim that the purpose of the Act was to benefit the homeless and not about Olympic beautification, William Pitt was right when he stated “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”

On this Remembrance Day of 2009, Canadian troops are in Kabul province in Afghanistan; serving, fighting, bleeding and dying seeking to protect the freedom of the Afghani people to choose from the tyranny of the Taliban.

While in the province of British Columbia in their homeland of Canada the provincial government is seeking to impose the tyranny of “for their own good”, stripping the right to choose from homeless Canadians.

Which is why November 11th is a Day of Shame in British Columbia this year, as the government seeks to violate the freedom to choose of the homeless; a freedom that those we Remember on November 11th served, fought, bled and died to ensure for Canada and all Canadians.

On Remembrance Day it is important to remember not only those who made sacrifices but why those sacrifices were made.

Lest We Forget the price paid for our freedom and the right to choose for ourselves and in the forgetting dishonour the sacrifices of those we Remember on November 11th by allowing tyrants to violate the right of Canadians to decide what is best for them, themselves.

Issues, Provincial

BC Legislation to Violate the Homeless

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Everyone is treated the same by the BC government – except for those who aren’t.

Rich Coleman speaks of passing legislation stripping the homeless of their Charter rights by permitting police to use force to drag the homeless to the door of a shelter. Not in, just to the door.

In response Vancouver city councillor Andrea Reimer tweeted “Thinking about introducing a motion requiring police to pick up Minister Coleman next time he’s in Vancouver and drop him off at Jenny Craig,” which resulted in Councillor Reimer being assailed by the press.

Unfortunately Councillor Reimer opted for political expediency over character and conviction and retracted her statement and apologized.

Unfortunate because Reimer’s tweet was a most apt and penetrating critique of the liberal government’s ‘Assistance to Shelter Act’.

Although it is hardly surprising that the insight of Reimer’s comments should go unperceived and unremarked by a press corps that gave rise to the Victoria Times Colonist inaccurate headline “Law would force homeless inside”.

Coleman said the proposed law gives police authority to take people to shelters, even if it requires them to use force and that the government is doing it because they need to protect people who won’t help themselves.

Now, we know that being overweight raises the likelihood of dying from a heart attack or other health related complications.

Given that Mr. Coleman’s decision not to lose the excess weight puts his life at risk and in light of the BC Liberal government having adopted a policy of intervention in order “to protect people who won’t help themselves” does it not follow that Mr. Coleman must be taken, by force if necessary, to a weight loss clinic “for his own good” whether he wants to go or not?

If we are going to start having special rules and treatment for one classification or sub-group of citizens for what we deem to be “their own good”, should this principle not apply to all deemed “who won’t help themselves”?

A rather steep, slippery and treacherous slope to step onto.

Or will the BC government be limiting protecting “people who won’t help themselves” to the homeless to avoid those who are not powerless to defend themselves from this type of assault on their rights and freedoms?

The government claims that this course of action is in the best interest of the homeless; choosing to ignore that those who know and interact with the homeless on a daily basis believe this course of action is likely to cost, not save, lives

Moreover the government has chosen to wilfully ignore the wildcard Mother Nature has added into the mix this winter of 2009/10 – H1N1

Consider that the homeless are an at risk population with numerous health related issues and challenges; this is the first wave of H1N1; a second wave is expected in the New Year; all the schools in Kitimat are closed because of a H1N1 outbreak, as other schools have been forced to close by H1N1.

Picture a crowded homeless shelter full of people. Is not a crowded shelter an even better place for the transmission of H1N1 than a school? Are not the homeless, an at risk population, “ripe for the infecting” by H1N1? How many will die as a result of the H1N1 virus if forced to shelters?

Given the H1N1 pandemic sweeping the globe, forcing the homeless to shelters will condemn some to their death.

Hmmmm. Government rounds up what is considered a problem population and sends them off to locations where they die…. Sounds familiar…