To the editor:
According to the 2013 capital and operating budget for the city, “the budget process represents the most important and comprehensive annual planning process carried out by the municipality.”
Yet not one open house was hosted by the city where the public can access council or administration and ask questions as another municipality in Ontario encourages. The city of Chatham-Kent actually hosted three such open houses this year.
What the citizens of Thunder Bay are offered is a poorly advertised pre-budget public meeting where citizens can provide their input four days after the city budget was released.
That the city does not want the public at these meetings is evident in the elimination of the post-budget public meetings. Their claim that not enough people attend is pure rhetoric, at least give them the opportunity, and if no one shows up, move on to the next item. I feel the local media is complicit in keeping the public away, by not writing a clip on the front pages of their publications informing them that they have the opportunity for public participation in the budget process.
It is so frustrating to listen to the mendacity of administration and council as they keep trying to tell us that the 27 per cent increase in assessment is to blame for the tax increase. While the increased assessment is being phased in over four years, let us assume everyone in the city was hit with this same average increase all at once this year.
Let us also pretend that the city actually balanced their budget (miracle of miracles) and did not come asking the overtaxed citizens for more money. The only thing that would change is the tax rate, that would go down and everyone would continue paying the same amount of tax.
This is what I would have liked to ask administration, but ask a question of administration, not on the transparency of office that our mayor campaigned on.
Henry Wojak,
Thunder Bay
