By Staff
October 1, 2019
BURLINGTON, ON
It won’t begin until after Halloween has come and gone – the details of the 2020 budget, while not cast in stone, are basically worked out by Staff.
City manager Tim Commisso does not have much of an appetite for raiding the reserve funds. Councillor Sharman shares that view.
Some changes take place – but not all that much – unless, like last year, funds were pulled out of various reserve funds.
Proposed meeting dates for the 2020 budget include:
Nov. 4, 2019
Meeting of Committee of the Whole: Budget overview report
Nov. 19, 2019
2020 Budget Telephone Town Hall
Dec. 10 and 12, 2019
Meeting of Committee of the Whole: Budget review and approval
Dec. 16, 2019
Meeting of Burlington City Council: City Council to consider approval of proposed 2020 budget.
For a city that has a department working on how they are going to engage the citizens – holding a Town Hall meeting is the equivalent to the cake the French nobility fed its citizens.
Previous councils held public meetings that were exceptionally well attended – not all but more than several.
Burlington has always had a small group of citizens who get out to public meetings to review budgets, policy proposals and share ideas.
On a number of occasions the meeting hall has been packed. Proper preparation and a genuine commitment to engage does produce results.
During the settling of the budget last year city manager Tim Commisso said that he wanted to do some work on putting the various reserve funds into groups rather than literally scores of them being listed. Some reserve funds are mandatory while others sit there with no clear purpose. There is certainly an opportunity to do some tidying up at that level.
No word on when the city manager is going to let everyone in on what he has managed to get done.
