It's Budget Time Again.....

Citizen Ellie has returned from a well-deserved vacation in the world centre of civility -- Prince Edward Island -- where the biggest problem confronting Charlottetown's civic leaders was the infestation of wasps in the city centre.

One could not walk on the streets with impunity. Indeed, Citizen Ellie was attacked and stung as she made her way past Province House.

But this was a minor matter when compared to what confronts Ottawans over the next couple of months.

Are we to take a hint from the fact that councillors need to hire extra outside help to assist them through the budget process ? One wonders if this bunch are so clueless that they need to hire outsiders to assist them with their household budgets? Seems simple to Citizen Ellie. Money comes in (salary, wages, pension or the like), money goes out (mortgage, taxes, groceries, car payment, hydro, phone, water, heating, cable/satellite) and what's left over is for savings or discretionary spending. Don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that when more money goes out than comes in, serious trouble lies ahead.

One also wonders what all those six-figure salaried city employees are doing to earn their top dollars ? There's a huge bunch of them. Surely one or two of these folk must understand the budget process and have the ability to present it to council members in the simple terms that they will understand.

The city currently faces a situation where more money is going out than is coming in. A deficit of about $12 million is predicted for the current fiscal year. That doesn't include the $37 million to settle the LRT lawsuit. That doesn't include cost of the bus strike or the arbitration award for which we're still waiting. That doesn't include fixing the west end sewers to put an end to flooded basements. That doesn't include the cost of cleaning up the Ottawa River. Then there are the pie-in-the sky items -- the new transit system (haven't heard a peep from the province or the feds re their share of the funding), and the planned rejuvenation of Lansdowne Park (another money-sucker which is going to make lawyers rich as injunctions are filed to prevent the handing over of one of the choicest pieces of downtown property to a consortium of developers without tender). All of this bodes ill for the residential property taxpayer.

The charade of public consultation regarding the budget will no doubt occur again this year. The charade takes the form of public meetings where the budget is presented and members of the public ostensibly have a say in how their property tax dollars are to be spent. What a farce !

Citizen Ellie attended one of these "consultations" last year. It was presided over by Councillors Michel Bellemare, Jacques Legendre and Georges Bedard. They listened intently when representatives of special interest groups made their presentations. Their eyes glazed over when overburdened taxpayers pleaded for restraint.

It became evident as the evening progressed that some of the special interest group representatives were well-coached and armed with printed statements which they parroted at the microphone/s. If asked to elaborate by one of the councillors, they resorted to re-reading the printed statement over again. One suspected that perhaps they'd had some assistance from CUPE 503 as the special interests being promoted employ numerous CUPE 503 members.

Citizen Ellie is a CNN fan and it's interesting to watch how our neighbors to the south are behaving at "town hall" meetings. Politicians of all stripes are having a hard time of it at these public sessions -- which citizens now refer to as "tea parties", the historical context being the famous Boston Tea Party which gave birth to the slogan "No Taxation Without Representation". Ottawa ratepayers could learn something from this. We've been sheep for far too long. It's time we stood up at a budget session or two or three and told councillors flat out to quit pissing on our legs and telling us that it's raining.

Fiscal restraint. Frugality. Those are the words Ottawa ratepayers want to hear.

Speaking of frugality, Citizen Ellie practised some herself in PEI. Instead of spending $130.00 green fees plus another $20.00 for share of cart, she contented herself with a soda on the clubhouse verandah at plush Crowbush Cove. That's cutting the coat in accordance with the cloth !

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