I am now working on my fifth budget since I have been a councilor in the Crowsnest Pass. The annual exercise of trying to make to few dollars go to far. Every year we take dollars away from our various municipal departments, organizations that the taxpayers wish to assist. Then we nail our taxpayers with increases to fill the gap left over. All the time I have been arguing that we need to take a look at a number of areas where we duplicate services. One of those areas has been advertising all of our municipal business in two local newspapers. Despite some silly arguments that were presented:
Some people do not read one paper or the other- what about the people that read neither.
Not advertising in both papers may affect the business viability of one paper or the other-What if we had two bids on a water line could not the same argument be made?
One paper may be favoured over another-Its a tender process does anybody think our administration is going to recommend a higher bid?
The newspapers have different levels of circulation-Do we pick a contractor to pave streets because he paves more streets than his competition?
Well finally common sense prevails, the council of the Crowsnest Pass saw fit to go with advertising in one paper, the advertising will be tendered and hopefully we have some very competitive bids come forth.
This will close our budget gap by probably somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 per year.
Just in the four and a half years I have been on council we have spent somewhere between $150,000 and $200,000 in duplicating our advertising.
That amount could buy a Grader for our public works department, support our allied arts contribution for 7-10 years, run our second arena for a year. Or take 2.5% of this years tax increase.
Also last night we decided to go one step further on the path to fiscal responsibility, we will no longer be advertising our utility bills due date. A practice that we were throwing away $3-4000 per year on.
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