Thunder Bay’s city council is comprised of mostly seasoned vets.
So why then, in the final hours of drafting the 2015 municipal budget, did some councillors seem so inexperienced?
Take the budget meeting of Monday, March 2 as an example. Councillors met that evening for the final time to discuss and eventually ratify the proposed municipal budget. Being the final meeting, you’d expect councillors would be crossing t’s and dotting i’s.
Instead council spent the better part of five hours throwing hail-mary budget proposals at administration hoping to find 11th-hour reductions. After hours of debates and amendments, council managed to shave less than a per cent off the tax levy increase to bring it to 3.8 per cent.
Last-minute reductions aren’t unheard of, but discussions surrounding major service cuts and getting out of businesses entirely are difficult to complete in a year let alone a single meeting.
You might forgive a first time city politician for thinking a single meeting could suffice. But only one councillor that night could claim they were a rookie.
The entire evening begs the question: Are some councillors really interested in the service cuts they proposed, or are they more interested in symbolically distancing themselves from a tax levy increase?
Councillors interested in cutting into the municipal tax levy will start the process of tightening the fiscal belt for the 2016 budget today. Those who wait until February or March should expect to have their sincerity questioned.
