Municipal spending in the Crowsnest Pass

Today's Pass Herald regarding municipal spending:

http://passherald.ca/archives/141112/index2.htm


Here is the article from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

Spending threatens fiscal sustainability of AB municipalities

http://www.cfib-fcei.ca/english/article/6726-spending-threatens-fiscal-sustainability-of-ab-municipalities.html

Crowsnest Pass ranks middle of the pack at 76 out of 181 municipalities (Page 21 of the report)

Election 2013 Dean Ward announces Candidacy

Below is the press release I provided to today's  Pass Herald regarding my official announcement to offer myself as a candidate for the upcoming election. If you have any idea's, concerns, questions or just want to help my information is at the bottom of the release.  

My name is Dean Ward I am very please to announce that I will be running for the position of councilor in the upcoming election October 21^st.

I am very proud to be the husband of Debbie, father of three and proud grandfather of two beautiful girls. I have been a resident of the Crowsnest Pass for 31 years, I previously sat on the Historical society board for three years, currently I am sitting on the Crowsnest Pass Health Foundation. 

One of my greatest assets is experience I sat on council for six years (2004-2010), very few people can claim to have participated in six municipal budgets, my experience will become even more valuable if the next council is comprised of a majority of members that have never sat on council previously.

2010 this community voted for change, change is inevitable and will happen whether we want it or not. The questions with change are always, what, how much, and how fast. Moving forward the next council must focus on involving the community and allow the residents to have input and steer the directions of future changes.

The strategic plan of 2011 was put together by a group of people that do not live in the Crowsnest Pass for the most part. It lacked local support right from the beginning, the public was never given the opportunity to be a part of this plan. Even though the plan had some very good recommendations, it was never “our plan” it was councils.     

The greatest challenges we face in the Crowsnest Pass is the fact that we have no tax base, after the closure of the Devon Gas Plant approximately 10% of our tax base is commercial/industrial. Ninty cents of every dollar raised by the municipality comes from residential taxpayers. According to the last Canada Census on average we have the oldest citizens in the province of Alberta, in simple terms every time we increase the burden on our taxpayers, we make it less affordable for seniors to live here.  

If  you choice to vote for Dean Ward you will be choosing a candidate that believes very strongly in the following:

Fiscal responsibility, I will not brag about small tax increases for the next four years while at the same time taking an extra $400,000 a year out of the taxpayers pockets by increasing Franchise Fees a whooping 230% over three years. I will bring forth a bylaw that only allows the municipality to increase Taxes, Franchise Fees, Utilities, Permits, Fines all forms of revenue by a maximum of the annual Canadian cost of living rate. Governments job should be to minimize expenditures not maximize revenues we all must live within our means. This community does not have the luxury of being able to afford to spend $400,000 on a logo, or $50,000 to buy the rights to a Best Western brand for a private company.

Smaller government, we now employ more administrators than the Crowsnest Pass as ever had previously, with another new position currently advertised. 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. To put that in a different perspective out of the 3100 homes in our community, 600 of them will be paying taxes just to maintain our administration.

There is much more to my platform, which I will be sharing with the public over the next six weeks, I look forward to speaking to as many people as possible. If you have any questions or concerns or would like to help me with my campaign, feel free to call me at 563 4128 or email deanward4@msn.com. 

Throw the bums out!

On Mr Prince's Blog this morning is a post regarding the rising discontent over incumbent politicians and how local incumbent politicians should be very afraid.
I would like to speak to some of the comments he refers to.

http://blog.johnprince.ca/search?updated-min=2010-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-07%3A00&updated-max=2011-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=25

I know this is a case on the International and provincial side of things but the article he refers to does not talk at any point about municipal politics, but lets assume it will flow to that level.

Anyway let's talk about the rest of the post I will take some quotes and address them with my comments :

"According to the above story people in general are angry. Very Angry! They feel their politicians are elitist, arrogant and oblivious to their pain and suffering, and as such doing little to nothing to address their issues and concerns. As a result, it's a very, very bad time to be an incumbent."

Most of us on the present council are simple folks six of us have lived here for ten years or more.
Do we have some members of our council that are elitist, arrogant and oblivious to the residents pain and suffering, yes I think we have some of that do you really think taht applies to the whole of council? should they all be painted with that same brush?

Then we go to:

"With this in mind, I wonder how our own incumbents are feeling about their chances of getting back in, considering the mood of our residents towards the on-going, never ending, three year long battle between the two waring camps on our council?"

John you really do not buy into the 4-3 Irwin propaganda do you? we all know that council spilt over the Crowsnest Centre issue and a some budgetary related issues. We also all recognize that 95% of Council Motions pass by something other than 4-3.
Would this be the first council accused of being 4-3?
But as you have said many times yourself this council did a lot of things well and did not receive enough credit for the good things they did.

"The never ending battle between the waring camps" isn't that exactly how the media, Irwin and his cronies portrayed the council from 1998-2001? Was that all accurate?.

"All the while, apparently, oblivious to the fact there is a good chance none of them will be getting back in because of their past actions".

If none of us are to get back in due to our "past" actions then I suspect the voters will go back further than just this last council, because very few of us that have sat on council previously have not had our names tarnished by one part of the media or the other and Irwin's cronies.

"and understand from this that what is needed and wanted is democracy in action where councillors actually work together as a team for the greater common good and get things done, by applying some good old-fashioned basic common-sense while leaving the grandstanding and 'gotcha' politics behind"

Democracy isn't that about taking a position, debating it and voting? 4-3, 5-2, 6-1, 7-0 which one of them is not democracy.

"Can one blame them? After all, this council treated us like we were mushrooms i.e. kept us in the dark and fed us BS. We never had public forums to discuss any of the important issues, such as Bridgecreek/River Run and the lack of security deposits and long-term taxpayer liabilities, CLC (legal costs), the 4-3 voter split, etc., etc. and still know little to nothing on who, what, when and why with respect to these matters? They acted like they were above us and need not bother or trouble themselves with such matters as accountability and due diligence. Transparency went out the door as did fiscal responsibility. Thoughtful people believe one side was as bad as the other with respect to these matters, and therefore neither side is deserving of getting back in."

Couple of comments:
The Bridgecreek/River Run this is a private deal no different than any other development, we as a council can approve development agreements, zoning etc. No different than if I owned a piece of private land the municipality can not force me a built on it. There are people here that have owned land for 50 years and never done anything with it. That is a right allowed to us in a democratic country.
The mistakes the council made here was when the first council sold this property back in the mid 90's with no conditions attached to it.
Then this council made a large error, when we did not force them to put up security, I also feel that the Mayor made a big mistake when he appeared in their promotional video.

CLC legal costs those were not caused by council if you go back to the report in the spring that we were given by our financial officer after a request by Councillor Mitchell if memory serves me right those costs were about $80,000. Approximately $30,000 of that was due to the plebiscite that was forced on the municipality, which the public eventually sent a clear message on. The rest was as a result of the legal action taken due to the leases signed by the CLC Society.

The 4-3 I give Irwin credit here, he created an issue to blind as many people as possible to the real issues.
What amazes me is that some really smart people have brought into this issue, unless of course they are just using it for political advantage!
Another point if we are going to label this council as the 4-3 council what would we label previous councils, I hope I get this right:

1998-2001 4-3
2001-2004 5-2
2004-2007 4-3
2007-2010 4-3

Help me out folks let me know if I'm wrong.


"Fiscal Responsibility out the door".

Really over the last ten years can anybody point to a council that as done more to become more efficient, to reduce costs, than this one? sometime in the next two weeks I will list them all.

Anyway back to the question on the post, should incumbents be afraid? I guess depending on which side of the issues the voters side with, obviously some incumbents should be afraid.
But I believe that some of the councillors on this last council stood for what they truly believed in despite the fact that they were lambasted in parts of the media week after week.
They could have had it easy, they could have sat back and agreed with Irwin and his cronies, caused no controversy, had wonderful things said about them by those same hacks.

And today those same people would be blasting them for being a 7-0 council, a bunch of mindless sheep, Irwinites, that stood for nothing.

Anyway I believe that the people of the Crowsnest Pass are smart enough to cut through the crap that parts of the local media and Irwin and his cronies, have put out about members of this council and previous ones.

Finally yes I agree some what in that a few of the incumbents do not deserve to come back.
Change will happen in the Crowsnest Pass.

Crowsnest Pass 2010 Mill Rate/Budget passes second Reading

Tuesday Night April 6th the Municipal Council passed the first two readings of the 2010 Mill rate bylaw. It should have gone to third reading but Mayor Irwin with the support of Councilors Mitchell and Taje refused to allow that vote to take place so it will come up again on April 20th for third reading.
The Budget which drives the mill rate was based on a maximum increase of 3% in revenue. Something that council laid out as an expectation of our administration right from the beginning of the budgeting process.
The municipality of Crowsnest Pass as seen its reserves dwindle over the last ten years from a level of $4 million to $600,000 by the end of this fiscal year. Why because we have done so much infrastructure work. The problem now is this year we are taking $500,000 plus out of reserves we can no longer do that. Well we could for one more year but then our reserves would be completely deleted we can not allow that we must build those reserves back up.
That leads to the process that council/administration have gone through for the last couple of months we have pushed administration very hard to cut every corner possible to produce a surplus that could go back into our municipal reserves and start rebuilding them.
Administration did that to a point they came back with a surplus of $215,000, where the area of contention arose was over what some of council considered was a further opportunity to reduce expenditures by addressing requests for new positions.
Which consisted of the following:
Additional Sewer Plant Operator cost of $94,614
Part time Position for the Human Resources Department $25,625
Linesman $85,500
Two Casual employees for Public Works $52,900
The status of these positions have been raised by council a number of times and of course administration did there best to justify the needs for such positions. The argument was made during the debate that the grasses in parks, the sweeping of streets would not occur. This of course is complete nonsense we are not laying anybody off, we are not eliminating any service.
The opportunity as been given to council to start rebuilding this municipalities finances we can choose on April 20th to do that or we can choice not to.

Budget Gap Closes in the Crowsnest Pass

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.