Skip to content

Opinion: The Mayor still refuses to address the elephant in the room

Taxpayers are being asked to continue pay employee salaries while City Hall is closed and dozens of non-essential employees are basically on paid vacations
20200326 city hall turl
North Bay City Hall. Jeff Turl/BayToday.

Editor's note. Mr. Rennick is responding to a BayToday article entitled Canadian Taxpayers Federation questions funding demands of municipalities like North Bay

-----

It is interesting that the Mayor will attempt to publically defend his actions when challenged by a Federal taxpayers’ organization but not do so when challenged by individual taxpayers.

The Mayor still refuses to address the elephant in the room. The elephant in the room is the fact that not one of the over 400 full-time employees at City Hall has been laid off. Taxpayers are being asked to continue pay employee salaries while City Hall is closed and dozens of non-essential employees are basically on paid vacations.

Specific non-essential positions that could be eliminated without anyone noticing especially during this crisis: Community Development department, Deputy-Clerk, Deputy By-law officer, Financial Reports Coordinator, Economic Development department, Parking enforcement personnel. Savings resulting from a four-month furlough would be approximately $450,000,

Departments with non-essential positions which that could be eliminated: Arena, Building Department, Planning & Building Services, Recreation and Leisure, Customer Service, Financial Services, Human Resources, Information Services. Even with a 15% reduction in staff, savings resulting from a four-month furlough would be approximately $350,000

Council approval of a request for a $10 billion handout from the Feds has nothing to do with ensuring we won’t be left out of any help that may be offered in the future. There has been no suggestion from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation that COVID 19 did not impact municipalities. These are straw man arguments being put forward by the Mayor who is skilled at using this tactic to avoid direct answers to awkward questions.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation hit the nail on the head with their criticism of the FCM request and the Mayor’s responses indicate he does not understand or refuses to acknowledge the difference between reducing revenues streams which only exacerbates the problem, pushing projects into the future which will have to be paid for eventually and reducing expenditures which will actually assist taxpayers by saving them money.

Financial problems arising because of this crisis are a result of real and anticipated reductions in City revenues. By taking steps to reduce revenues, the Mayor and council have actually heightened the problem not lessened it.

Eliminating parking enforcement reduces revenue. This action assisted a tiny percentage of people who for whatever reason are not following the rules. That merely means a larger budget shortfall. This is a reduction in revenue rather than a “prudent step to find savings” as the Mayor suggests that council is taking.

Cancelling penalties and interest on late tax payments reduces revenue. Here again, this revenue is coming from a small percentage of people who are consistently not paying their taxes on time.  Eliminating those penalties penalizes those people who adhere to the rules and offers no help to them in any way. The Mayor’s statement that; “We have taken all the steps to mitigate any budget shortfalls” is ridiculous in the extreme.

The question is what can be done about it. The short answer is nothing. There are no laws against incompetence. The only slight hope for taxpayers is that a majority of council members will decide to speak out against this charade being perpetrated by the Mayor and supported by the Deputy-Mayor and others suggesting they have exhausted all avenues of assistance for taxpayers.

Don Rennick

North Bay