That budget - Councillors Sharman and Dennison make comments.

By Pepper Parr

January 27th, 2016

BURLINGTON, ON.

The meeting started with a close to mammoth photo op – players from the Barracudas and the Eagles were on hand to receive certificates of appreciation for the very impressive work they did on the Giving Back project that brought in close to 300,000 lbs of food that was distributed to community organizations.

The Giving Back initiative has proven to be so successful that Brampton and Oakville are taking a look at it and there is talk about developing it as a national program

The students who were given Certificates of Appreciation by the Mayor in turn gave the city a painting that noted the 10th year of the Giving Back program.

It was perhaps fitting that the young people getting the certificates of appreciation were the opening act for a city council meeting at which a budget was approved that runs quite a bit ahead of inflation. The long term projection is for budgets that are usually above 3.5% for the next twenty years.

The city finance department set out what they expected tax increases to be through to 2035.

It is those energetic hockey players who are going to have to pay taxes that increase 3.5% year over year.

In 2011 when this council put out its first budget in their first term (they were all re-elected) the budget had a 0% increase.

The budget was not unanimously approved – Councillor Dennison did not vote for it and Councillors Meed Ward and Taylor were lukewarm – they wanted a different budget but couldn’t seem to pull the strings that would give them what they wanted.

The Free Monday transit for seniors was the issue that divided this council but it was not the structural issue that made this budget different.
Both Councillors Sharman and Dennison had detailed comments which they made once the budget was approved.

In his comments Councillor Dennison said he was not supporting the 2016 City Budget for the following reasons:
“I am not happy with a Burlington Tax increase of 3.19%” he said and “I had a number of recommended reductions including saving a possible $337,000 on the Transit Community Connection. He wanted the service to be paid for by users and the benefiting businesses. He pointed out that it costs $10 million to subsidize our current level of transit.

He also wanted to eliminate additional expense and staff for promotion of Canada 150 and save a potential $100,000.

Dennison wanted to reduce the amount that was being put into the Strategic Land Acquisition fund from $750,000 to $550,000 and save $200,000

Dennison wanted the provision for insurance claims reduced by $150,000. He pointed out that $500,000 from retained savings had already been put into the account and that was enough.

Dennison identified a total of $1,337,000 that could have been saved. His fellow Councillors didn’t agree with him. These changes would have brought our city of Burlington Tax increase down by 1% to 2.19%.

The city collects taxes for the Board of education and the Regional government. City council is fully responsible for setting the city tax rate; it has no impact or input on the school board taxes. Burlington has significant input on the Regional tax rate but Burlington doesn’t have all that much clout at the Regional level.

Dennison said he continues to have concerns with service-based budgeting. “There are benefits to the approach but it does not replace the need to know how individual operations are performing.

Burlington moved to a service based approach to budgeting which groups different operations making it very difficult to drill down to a line by line look at costs. He pointed to the problem comparing single-pad arenas to multi-pad arenas with respect to cost of operation and concerns with the Paletta Mansion and the Ella Foote Hall in Kilbride.

Dennison doesn’t feel that serviced based budgeting lets Councillors see all the costs and wants both service-based and individual results in 2017 so he can properly review the budget.

Councillor Jack Dennison has the best grip on where the budget dollars go – he does tend to drill down a little too deeply at times but he consistently wants to see the city spending less money.

Dennison points out that “If we over-budgeted in 2015 that means that we over-taxed our assessed properties and the gross tax should be reduced by something closer to that amount and not just be put into reserves.

Just before the vote was taken, Councillor Sharman – ward 5 – said he wanted to on the record with respect to a few items:

“I fully respect and admire the work of community members who promote what they believe is a good idea. I deeply appreciate the time and effort and sometimes emotional strain undertaken by community members in delegating to Council. However, I often believe that delegations represent less than all of the opinions held by all members of the community.

“I have been and continue to be fully supportive of providing, timely, effective and affordable transportation to our community and especially those who have real needs. Perhaps as much as 37% of seniors need or desire to have use convenient transit at an affordable price, according to more thorough analysis of the Oakville free Monday Seniors Bus pilot program. That represents about 11,500 Burlington Senior residents. 63% of Oakville Seniors did not need or want free transit.

Intense to the point of making delegations uncomfortable ward 5 Councillor Paul Sharman does know how to drill down into the data and look for results.

“I wonder why we should provide only one day a week free to those who need services when there is a high probability that they need it all the time. Research suggests that it should be all the time.

“I wonder about why we would not include other groups such as students. I don’t know how many people that would help, but I would like to know.

“We know that 9.5% or about 18,000 Burlington Community members live on less than the low income cut off threshold. Other people who have insufficient income to live on could push this figure up to 36,000 people who need or desire help.

“Without setting aside the legitimate desire and needs of seniors I wish to point out that we have in total perhaps in the order of 50,000 people who might legitimately be helped by Council. Split Pass provides us the way but it needs to be changed.

“Meanwhile, Burlington Transit has struggled to redesign itself to provide a viable business model that will meet the needs of all Burlington community members.

“I am not opposed to change for Transit. However, I am opposed to knee jerk inadequately thought out change. We have a chance to accomplish a properly thought out and real change when we discuss the transit service business case which we are committed to do as a result of my staff direction for Council to have a workshop to review each and every city business case.”

Other members of council had comments but they were not as extensive as those made by Councillors Sharman and Dennison.