Comment
Be the badger
Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe we should be content that the tax levy is rising by just 5.5 per cent, rather than the 11 per cent hike proposed at the start of the municipal budget process. It was a remarkable turn of events.
Indeed, most folks absorbing the news that the tax increase is now half of what was initially put on the table are likely to breathe a sigh of relief and move on with their lives. It is the healthy response.
Nevertheless, it is a curious thing that $3.3 million was found and eliminated from $91 million in spending in the 2026 budget—and thereby reducing the tax levy by the same amount. How much more is hidden in the vast forest of municipal spending?
If millions of dollars of savings were merely sitting there like Easter eggs, waiting to be discovered, how much is still out there? How many millions are still sitting under a leaf waiting for councillors to sniff them out?
Nevertheless, council members are feeling vindicated this week that they, and they alone, shaved the cost of running the municipality next year. It was “our job,” they blustered when it was suggested that the proposed budget be turned back to staff with direction to bring it back at the same level of funding as this year, plus the cost of living.
At the end of four longish days, they had indeed delivered a much lower tax levy increase. An unalloyed good thing. But it is hard to know what more was available. There was no obvious damage inflicted, no apparent programs, services or projects were cut. Every department is well-stocked for next year. There was no gnashing of teeth. No warnings of certain doom.
A reserve has been reduced. That’s it.
It leaves the unsettling question: How much more might have been found, had Council looked harder?
Perhaps we should be grateful. But I can’t shake the feeling it was a house game, and council members were the lucky contestants.
UNDER EVERY ROCK
For now, any hope for a return to a semblance of financial responsibility rests squarely on the CAO’s shoulders. He has promised an overhaul in the new year. Adam Goheen has committed to examining the County business from top to bottom. He says he will undertake a thorough service delivery and organizational review in the first half of the year.
He wants to open the hood on each line of business, each program, and each department.
This newspaper hopes that such a review will do the hard work of assessing the cost/benefit to the residents of this community, and realign them as necessary. Ideally, a review will peer into every corner of the County’s operations to ask questions such as: Do we need to do this any longer? Could it be done better externally? Does the volume of business/service warrant the resources and dollars invested in it? Could this service be realigned to deliver it better? More efficiently? Less expensively?
Priorities change over time. Community needs change. They evolve. But bureaucracies don’t. They aren’t built that way. Bureaucracies grow. And grow. They require regular trimming.
There is no mechanism equivalent to creative destruction in the delivery of municipal services. In a competitive marketplace, creative destruction is the process by which innovation reshapes an economy from within. Better products, methods and models constantly displace the old, tired and redundant. There is no such process in a bureaucracy.
Not until, that is, someone with a strong back and principled determination comes along to turn over stones.
And to be crystal clear—municipal government isn’t a business. Its roles and purposes are different. But the very things meant to shield a bureaucracy from the vagaries of the marketplace also block innovation, creativity, and renewal. They impair the efficient use of the organization’s capital and erode the healthy respect that should exist between the funders and the spenders.
So, as CAO Goheen rightly observes, a service delivery and organizational review is a necessary expectorant for local government. It is something that should happen regularly—but hasn’t for a long time. The need is particularly acute in a government that extracts twice as much from taxpayers as it did in 2012—for the same number of residents.
It is equally vital that the cycle of that’s-the-waywe’ve- always-done-things manner of thinking be broken. An org review is the only way this happens.
Even as much as I would like to have seen a smaller budget increase this year, any long-term fix to this institution must first take the machine apart and examine each piece—looking for relevance and value.
So, on we go.
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