The Mayor scared the crap out of me with his talk about a 50 cent dollar until I put my coffee cup down and re-read his article. The Mayor was explaining how the City had made good investments with a hockey team and an airline, both businesses that have brought jobs to the City of North Bay. It seems that some people on the Taxpayers watchdog organization do math a little differently than the accountants in the mayor’s office.
Those of us who are buying goods and services from around the world might be feeling the pinch with the ailing 75 cent dollar so you can understand how talk of a further devalued Loonie might be cause for my concern. One only has to go to the grocery store to see how prices have risen due to our weak dollar. Try buying something on the internet from a US source and put the Canadian equivalent money in your spreadsheet. Then watch as the figure changes when the VISA card numbers arrive. Add some duty and taxes and you begin to think that those Taxpayer people might be onto something. My 75 cent dollar is translating into 50 cent American dollars without the help of city math.
But not to worry. The bureaucrats at City Hall are used to working with these imaginary 50 cent dollars. When they can get their hands on some 33 cent dollars they really can work the handle on that old calculator. (A 33 cent dollar is when the Provincial and the Federal governments kick in matching City dollars on a project.) Even those Three P projects like the Hospital sound great at City Hall. When the Mayor says he used 70 cent dollars you have to believe it was a good thing.
Gee, you’re thinking, it is too bad we couldn’t run the whole city operation with 50 or even 70 cent dollars! Well, in fact, we do run a large portion of the city on these small dollars. We get grants and allowances from the Province for many sections of the budget. The budgets are carefully calculated on these money inputs from other levels of government. You can see why there is great consternation at the City when the Ontario budget changes these dollars from 50 to 60 or 70 cents. It means the City has to find some real money to bridge the difference.
Problems arise when we forget about our half of the 50 cent dollars, and perhaps this is where the Taxpayers Association comes into the picture. No matter how sweet those projects appear with their 70 cent dollars, the City still must raise the matching money. Buy into too many of these sweetheart deals and the citizens find themselves taxed into a corner. The funding money from other levels of government are magical - they appear with little or no effort into the bank accounts; the City tax dollars on the other hand, are very real indeed and need to be collected from the citizens.
Projects with small dollars may also creep from ‘nice to have’ to ‘need’ to ‘absolutely must have’; the enthusiasm of council growing as the dollars get smaller. It’s like having a sale at the mall for something you really don’t need but at that price how can you not buy it? Look at the money you saved.
The fine print that comes with these magical dollars is that they have a set limit: any cost overruns come at the City’s expense. And like too many of these ambitious projects that have a percentage of magical dollars, spending controls may get a little loose. Need we mention MG?
The other thing that sometimes gets forgotten in the deal is that those contributing dollars from the Feds or Province are coming from us - it is just a different tax collector. Sure, if we don’t get them, Southern Ontario or some other province will get the money so we had better grab it while we can. After all, it is all our money. And if the other levels of government run low on cash they will simply tax us more - just like the City does.
It is the City’s responsibility to create an atmosphere conducive to business, to attract new ventures which create more jobs. If we can find these small dollars to help, all to the better. But let’s not become project poor creating business parks that are empty and sports venues that are idle - costing 100-cent dollars to maintain.
By the way, I hear there may be a seat sale soon. Even if you don’t want to go to Toronto. Just saying.
