By Pepper Parr
February 6th, 2023
BURLINGTON, ON
With Council just a bit over halfway through the Budget motions the projected 7.08 % increase moved up to 7.12 %
Councillor Nisan returns to the Council Chamber.
Councillor Bentivegna has 6 of the 15 motions under his name while Councillor Rory Nisan had 4 in his name.
We have to note that a fully masked Councillor Nisan has returned to the Council Chamber. We don’t believe he has been at a Council meeting since the start of the pandemic in 2020
Finance Director Joan Ford told Council that she hoped the budget could be wrapped up in a single day to which Councillor Sharman gave a quick thumbs up.
The Budget meeting is being chaired by Councillor Kearns who is giving Councillor Bentivegna the roughest ride he has ever had in his five years as a Council member.
The to and the fro between senior staff and council members has been interesting – this council has shown that it wants to do things differently.
Phil,
That’s the woke ideology, everyone should be poor. In engineering terms it s called “entropy”. Haven’t you heard, we seniors in the community should be funding infrastructure for newcomers.
Meanwhile at a national level during this governments tenure, virtually no significant resource projects have been sanctioned, yet it is revenue from resource industries that have helped at least to this point to keep the social net from completely collapsing.
Mind you we keep hearing about “critical minerals” In Canada’s case these are nothing more than media talking points. It isn’t and hasn’t been happening.
That social net is just about done and as the Fed will likely keep raising interest rates. The BOC will likely have to do the same or the CDN dollar will free fall further and imported goods will continue to rise in price.
In the seventies I will remind those old enough to remember that there were three successive peaks in inflation each one higher that the last.
This is purely political. Some mayors in Ontario, for example the Mayor of Ottawa, are holding the line on local taxes realizing that its citizens are facing an affordability crisis–this is the responsible choice. In Burlington, MMW is the classic “tax and spend” Liberal who believes that government has all the answers and can spend our money better than we can. Just like her federal colleagues, MMW is increasing taxes and adding to the affordability crisis.
So, after a long day (poor delicate flowers) they settled on an increase of 7.52%. This will be a strain on many, particularly seniors trying to stay in their homes and challenged by fixed incomes. What we should not forget is that this contribution to a general “affordability crisis” was, in part, the product of a lack of fiscal restraint and prudence in this Council’s first term. The previous funding of pet projects, capital supports to entitled groups and promotion of feel good/virtue-signalling initiatives has depleted the capital reserves to a critical degree. The cupboard is bare. Well done group!
Not surprising–this City’s leadership (?) has an established strategy of filling the spending space created by the Region bringing in a budget under the rate of inflation. Regard for the taxpayers, particularly seniors (who only received a 6.3% increase in their pensions), is not a factor–apparently MMW feels it’s OK to reduce their standard of living.