I know I have touched on this issue previously, but its important enough to talk about it some more.
I was asked a question on the weekend by a municipal employee.
It was phrased this way: "How can two councils be so different, last year all we heard was the municipality had no money, then this year we hear that we are getting five more employees and a bunch of new equipment"
Simple question with a simple answer.
The municipalities reserves had been significantly depleted by infrastructure over the last 5-6 years. Last year council determined it made sense to not increase the number of employees but to put money back into reserves. ($450,000)
Previous council knew that the municipalities equipment fleet was old and needed to be replaced, so for the last five years was putting money into new equipment. ($250,000)
So now you come to 2011 its not like the municipality suddenly got wealthy, in the paragraph above there is $700,000 accounted for. So if you took a different approach and dispersed that money in different ways, lets say $3-400,000 in wages.
$120,000 to make a payment on the $560,000 debt to buy new equipment. The balance to pay for any other additional costs to offset a 0% tax increase.
Again its not like the municipalities financial situation got better, it would be no different than a couple saying we are not going to pay our mortgage this month or put any money in savings because we are going on a holiday, when we get back we will go out and finance a brand new truck. Short term appearance to the rest of the world is that you are doing very well.
Moving forward how does the municipality pay that $3-400,000 per year in wages year after year plus the $120,000 payment on its new debt. Plus will there be no further requests for new equipment next year? and eventually those reserves do have to be replenish at some point.
3 comments:
Hopefully they save some money by getting rid of the spring clean-up. I'm sure the town workers can do better, more cost effective things than take our stuff to the dump for us.
Just reading the Municipal Newsletter, it appears they will be changing the way they do the cleanup. (not much detail yet)
I would have liked to be in the room when they had this debate. Councilor Mitchell always strongly supported the former Mayor in his opposition to any change in the Spring Cleanup process.
Its time this stupid act making the Public Works guys in to garbage men came to an end.
How many millions $$$$$ have been wasted over the years.
People don't clean their places up give them a fine.
Nobody absolutly nobody as a right to live like a pig.
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