LETTER: Rubber stamping admin

To the editor:

It was painful to read the editorial "Municipal budgeting 101" in the Chronicle Journal, on Feb. 7.

The editor is making the numbers dance like city council and administration like to have them do, or something like that.
For starters:

The City of Thunder Bay’s combined benefit of the 2014 OMPF and provincial uploads totals $41,951,700 which is the equivalent of 28 per cent of the city's municipal property tax revenue.

The City of Thunder Bay's 2013 combined benefit totalled $42,038,100.

So while the OMPF funding went down by $1.5 million,the uploads went up by a similar amount,which council and administration conveniently  do not tell us.

This was an excellent year to see the goings on in the city budget, as the provincial funding is basically a constant.

Budget planning for 2014 was anything but compromised it was actually enhanced when a $2.3 million payment on a 2003 debenture no longer has to be made in 2014, but you would never know it with this council and administration. They are making taxpayers continue to make that $2.3 million payment. Remind me never to finance a car from that lot. One would have thought that would suffice to cover any increases to the 2014 budget, but no, they want another $5.5 million dollars.

Poor strategic planning and inefficiencies by this council and administration are what is causing taxes to go up. The report prepared by Small Business Consulting Services for the Chamber of Commerce shows just that.

This council is nothing but a dog-and-pony show for administration and will just rubber stamp the 2014 city budget after the theatrics.

Henry Wojak,
Thunder Bay