Comment
Less is more
Our species has an extraordinary capacity for self-delusion. The category or severity may vary between individuals, but we are all vulnerable. I see a sweater in a catalogue. I imagine myself as the rugged, chiselled, well-sweatered young adventurer atop the mountain ridge with my trusty Labrador at my side, pointing into the middle distance. A few days later, the sweater arrives. I put it on and find a mirror. It’s still me. Just me. In a new sweater. I haven’t changed. I didn’t morph into the young adventurer. Rather, the sweater morphed into me.
Marketing doesn’t work without self-delusion. There would be no point in advertising.
That is why we need numbers. They clarify. They don’t soften the picture or give a false impression. There are a great many numbers that clearly delineate me from the model in the catalogue (none that I care to discuss here or, frankly, acknowledge). The point is that these numbers should have offered clues about the limited transformative powers of that sweater. But I blew past them, carried along by the magic firefly of self-delusion.
This brings us to County budgets.
The only number that mattered was missing from the municipality’s operating budget press release—which sported plenty of look-here-not-there numbers. Fortunately, you have The Times to let you know your Council agreed to set the tax levy (the amount collected from you and me) at $43.9 million for this year. In 1998 the tax levy was $10.3 million. This means the levy has increased annually at a rate of 6.2 per cent since then. However, the number of residents (about 25,000) has barely budged in 24 years. More than four times the tax collected—same number of folks. It is an unsustainable pace. At this rate, the levy will breach $50 million in three years, and $60 million in six years. (I issued similar cautions before the levy hit $30 and $40 million—so perhaps I’m deluding myself that this time this trend will register with voters.)
In the chance that it does, I offer over the next couple of weeks a few suggestions about how to do budgets better. I have been writing and reflecting on County budgets for 18 cycles now—longer than any member of Council, likely anyone near municipal budgets at Shire Hall. It doesn’t take this experience— or any particularly acute insight— however, to see there are too many people around the Council table.
This community endured a decade working to shrink the size of Council, but only managed to drop from an unwieldy 16 to a slightly-less-unwieldy 14 members. Personally, if these 14 choose to waste their time talking in circles, I can’t really be roused to worry about it much. But it matters in budget debates.
So, what to do?
Council selects three from among their number. Three colleagues they can trust to do the hard work, diligently. Because we are also going to enact rules that prevent the rest of Council from re-opening every line item when it comes time to spend the money. Ideally they will have some finance, budget or business experience. We will pay these council members more. (The right incentives and signals are critical to better financial planning and performance. We will return to this in a future column.)
Call it a finance committee, budget review or Lenny; it does not matter. This group will meet regularly with the Director of Finance throughout the year. Setting goals and financial targets. Measuring benchmarks. Querying anomalies. Big picture stuff.
Once internal budgets have been hammered out, they will sit down over a few days in a detailed review—mostly to understand the variances. Why has this line increased? Or declined? For they must become the budget communicators. The proselytizers of County numbers. They must bring the messages to their Council colleagues and residents. Trends. Analysis. Details. The contours of municipal business. They will become the budget savants.
Near the end of Council’s most recent budget marathon, Councillor Andreas Bolik wanted to find $2.5 million more for roads. But rather than add the money to the budget or delete it from another budget—he, instead, turned it back to staff to find the money. Some councillors were offended by the tactic. I think the indignation was misplaced, even as I intensely disagree that any more money should be put into County roads until someone—anyone— articulates a sensible plan for sustaining the unsustainable.
Council members, especially those not on my imaginary finance committee, should be painting with a broad brush—setting goals and ambitions for the budget rather than the granular line-by-line approach they employ now. These goals should be articulated before internal budgets are prepared—not after the fact.
Fourteen folks sitting around a table for days, plodding from line to line through the budget, may feel like due diligence. It isn’t. It is fraught with dead-ends, and it obscures priorities. The signals this process sends to employees and taxpayers are muddled at best, and open to manipulation at worst.
While Council fritters away hours on small-ball items, the big picture eludes them.
That is how we get doubling, trebling and quadrupling of the tax levy, user fees and water bills. It is how, in the course of two decades, this place has been transformed from a rural family-centred community to an enclave for the wealthy.
We need a profound change in process and outlook, or it will quintuple and sextuple soon enough.
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