Tuesday, October 15, 2013

CNP Claims vs Facts

CLAIM:
Sept 16/2013 - Dean Ward in press release to Pass Herald:
"Smaller government, we now employ more administrators than the Crowsnest Pass has ever 

had previously...with a staff of less than fifty employees, do we really need nine administrators, 
when you add up all the salaries, benefits, vehicles, cell phones, computers etc… we will be 
spending in excess of $1.2 million a year."
FACT:
The Municipal Inspection Report indicates clearly that Crowsnest Pass has a completely normal 

number of administrators. One administrative position is the Deputy Fire Chief, which is a term 
contract that is paid by the Province in order to assist with training of Fire Department members. 
The $1,200,000 is a fabricated number based on several assumptions and guesses.
Currently Administration consists of CAO, CFO, Director of Operations, Director of Protective 
and Community Services (Vacant), Operations Manager, EDO, Fire Chief, Deputy Fire Chief 
(term contract paid by Province) - that is 7 permanent and 1 temporary.
While Dean Ward was on council they had CAO, CFO, Director of Operations, Director of 
Community Services, Director of Legislative and HR Services, Public Works Superintendent, 
Assistant Public Works Superintendent - that's 7.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Two representatives of the ratepayers met with the CAO just prior to Christmas of 2012 where they asked for the salaries of administration. They were told that the CAO made $160,000 last year which was later confirmed in the municipal financial statement. He also stated that the Directors were in the $105-120,000 a year range. Ken Robins informed everybody at the open house on the restructuring of the Fire/Rescue Departments that a fire chief would be paid $95,000 a year."

What bugs me is that according to FOIP, some types of information are confidential but everything else is supposed to be public.

If it's of the confidential type they should not be talking about it in public or disclosing it to some people in private meetings. If it's not confidential, then it should be equally available to everyone (meaning at the same time, not after insiders have it).

So if what you describe was legally disclosed, then the up-to-date version of those numbers should also be public information.

Anonymous said...

How are they going to try and convince us that they didn't spend over $300,000 on the branding/loge issue?

Anonymous said...

From Brian's blog:
"2013 is showing the highest development and building permits that we have seen since 2007"

With our new land use bylaw "A Development Permit is needed for just about any activity on an individual parcel of land.".

That includes building a deck, changing your roof from asphalt shingles to tiles or your siding to stucco. Want to replace your old windows with new larger ones? Development permit. A mural on your shop? Development permit. A development permit is also required for demolition.

So I'm not surprised that development permits are up.

Anonymous said...

The last three years have seen rising permit costs and bureaucratic creep of regulations which take large amount of time even for simplest projects. Imagine, a volunteer organization had to pay $500 for a permit to build a storage shed on a skid.

Also, the last three years have seen almost zero development to add to the tax roll as municipal spending rose.

Someone complained that previously too many lots were developed. In our tax situation, give your head a shake before saying something like this. Each of these lots added about $800 to the tax roll, even without buildings.

Anonymous said...

In another rousing endorsement of Mr Gallant tidal wave of economic boom. Housing sales for this year are lagging a full six percent behind last years numbers as of the end of September we had 77 sales compared to 83 at the same time last year.

Anonymous said...

8:00 said:
"Someone complained that previously too many lots were developed. In our tax situation, give your head a shake before saying something like this. Each of these lots added about $800 to the tax roll, even without buildings."

That was me. I agree CNP is getting tax revenues due to overoptimistic investment by developers, as long as they can afford to pay these taxes.

I would suggest that this glut of vacant lots reduces the market value (on which assessment is based) of other real estate in CNP, so total tax revenue may not increase.

I still think vacant lots with tired "for sale" signs look bad. Maybe they could locate the spiffy entrance signs to hide them.

:^)