By Pepper Parr
January 19, 2016
BURLINGTON, ON
The report going to the Community and Corporate Services Committee asks city council to approve the 2016 Operating Budget including any budget amendments.
The proposed net tax levy for 2016 is set at $146,883,341.
Members of Council have had the Operating Budget book since November and will now debate the operating budget and listen to public delegations at meetings on January 19, 20 and 21.
The budget goes to city council on January 25th where it gets approved.
The city held a just the one public meeting on January 14, 2016 at Tansley Woods Community Centre. The intent of the meeting was to provide residents with an overview of the 2016 proposed budget.
A disturbing comment was made when city council discussed the operating budget. Treasurer said her staff would inform the public about the operating budget but would not be “engaging” the public. No one corrected the treasurer – so this city might have to swallow a budget that asks for an increase of 3.85 % over the 2015 budget.
With inflation at the 2% level one would think the people paying the bills would want to have some say in why such a big difference between inflation and the increase in taxes. Perhaps city council feels the public had their say when they re-elected every member of this council in 2014.
Members of Council are given thick binders will details on the spending plans and are asked to submit Budget Action requests in which each council member sets out items they would like to see changed.
Some of the changes that have been put forward are set out below:
Members of city council were given the budget on a memory stick that allowed them to do simulations on what the budget total would look like if they added or deleted an expense items. This year they went through the budget line by line individually. Based on what the public has seen so far – it doesn’t look as if there is going to be much in the way of cuts. From the left are Councillors Jack Dennison, ward 4, Rick Craven ward 1 and John Taylor ward 3.
Ward 1 Councillor Rick Craven wants to see the one time funding of $35,000 for the Downtown Data Collection Project pulled. He points out that the original staff recommendation in September 2015 included the following observation: “After considering the staff and funding resources that would be required to collect accurate and useful data to inform the performance indicators and headline measures, staff is of the opinion that the value of obtaining and maintaining such data as a means to evaluating the experience of the downtown may be limited” Remove project and one-time funding of $35,000
The Performing Arts Centre appears to be facing an uphill battle for the additional business case funding it is asking for; $72,500 for a technician and $115,800 for someone to work on community engagement.
Ward 4 Councillor Jack Dennison wants the Performing Arts centre to stay within their budget; Councillor Blair Lancaster (Ward 6) wants data to show the success of the previous contract position and indicate if the proposed permanent position could be self-sustaining.
He also wants to know: Why has the Human Resources budget been increased by 6.2%?
Why is the Arts and Culture – Human Resources year-end projection for 2015 $43,000 over the budget?
Why is the budget $1,009,140 for Human Resources?
Why has the Human Resources budget for Council and Citizen Committee been increased by $30,000?
Dennison has always been the Councillor with the best understanding of the budget and has consistently asked the toughest questions.
Ward 2 Councillor Marianne Meed Ward seems to have focused on transit and seniors in the changes she wants to see in the 2016 budget.
Ward 2 Councillor Marianne Meed Ward has focused some of her energy on seniors and transit.
She wants to replace the existing business case with the following staff direction (Part 1): “Direct the Director of Transit to implement a pilot program for free transit on Mondays for seniors (65+) for the period April 1 – Sept 30 2016 and report back with results and a recommendation as part of the 2017 budget cycle.” The goal of the program is to increase ridership among seniors; among the Key Performance Indicators that will be tracked during the pilot are: change in ridership among seniors on Mondays; change in ridership among seniors Tuesday to Sunday; change in revenue from seniors Mondays and the rest of the week.
Replace the existing business case with the following staff direction (Part 2): “Direct the Director of Transit to implement a pilot program of a $30 monthly pass for seniors (65+) (about $1/day) for the period April 1 – Sept 30 2016 and report back with results and a recommendation as part of the 2017 budget cycle.” The goal of the program is to increase ridership among seniors and remove affordability concerns for people who may not qualify for the Regional SPLIT pass. Among the Key Performance Indicators that will be tracked during the pilot are: change in sales and revenue of monthly passes for seniors; change in ridership among seniors.
Ward 5 Councillor Paul Sharman has focused om both information technology and corporate management and is asking that staff be directed to prepare an assessment of each of the services with respect to their relative strategic importance. The objective is help determine where we might wish to reduce/cut spending and therefore be able to re-allocate funds to services which are strategically more important.
Councillors Sharman and Lancaster – both had changes they wanted to see in the 2016 budget.
Staff be directed to conduct a series of Council Workshops to explain and seek agreement about each service: strategic positioning; service improvement goals; improvement actions: short/medium & long term resource/financial requirement projections.
The Strategic Plan has now gone through an extensive public review – when staff returns with its summary of what the public thought of the document it will be brought to Council for adoption. Some of what Councillor Sharman is asking for will then get matched up with what is included in the Strategic Plan.
Sharman is perhaps the Councillor with the best understanding of spending on Information technology. He suggests that a justification based on the 2 1/2 year old report is of questionable value today due the pace of change in technology. He points out that a report did correctly point out that City systems are aging and should be updated.
Rather than spend $209,350 in 2016 and $407,250 in 2017 Sharman proposes the following staff direction: Funding for IT Business Cases be approved but be refined by the City Manager relative to his assessment of the alignment of IT projects, in the context of the Strategic Plan, and the current strategic review of IT now underway, as well as the approach proposed in the subject Business Cases.
City manager James Ridge has some IT experience – but his desk is pretty full with managing the city – and he no longer has a management level between his office and the directors. Interesting that there has been no mention of just what the city is going to have in the way of a management structure going forward.
Mayor Rick Goldring didn’t ask for any cuts to the 2016 budget but did want the city manager to look for ways to increase revenue.
Mayor Goldring didn’t seem to see anything he wanted to cut in the 2016 budget but did want the city manager to study approaches that the city can take in revenue generation and provide a report to committee with the presentation of the 2017 budget
