Not everyone supports the Cobourg Taxpayers Association (CTA) but most would support their statement that the “operating budget and capital budget process is the single most important responsibility that Council has”. In a recent newsletter to those on their mailing list, the CTA asked that the new Council make several specific improvements to budget preparation and reporting. Although they did not spell it out, the new council will have a new Deputy Mayor (Suzanne Séguin) and since the Deputy Mayor is responsible for organizing the budget process, there will be a fresh opportunity to do it differently. The outgoing Deputy Mayor, John Henderson, made some incremental improvements – slightly faster and more transparent – but the CTA is asking for bigger changes and they say that they have been asking for changes since 2015.
Budgets should be approved by year end – this will be difficult for this year since the process has not started but should be achievable next year. I note that Northumberland County manages this feat.
Include staffing levels (I would call it personnel count) in the process. The CTA says that these “are one of the most important items for Council to understand and review because salaries, wages and benefits represent over 50% of the Town’s $23+ million in property taxes collected each year. Adding staff is an expensive obligation for the current year and adds expenses for every future year.” Part time staff would be counted as “Full-time equivalents – (FTE)” – e.g. someone working for 3 months would be ¼ of an FTE. They say that this approach would make budgeting operating costs easier and simpler to review. My business experience is that major corporations use this approach. Manage personnel count and you manage most of the activity.
Provide regular comparisons of performance to budget. Although councillors may get reports on performance to budget, I found only one report to Council in the last 12 months and that was on 3 December 2017 for Q3, 2017 (there may have been others). That’s a full 2 months after the end of the quarter. When asked why it took so long, Treasurer Ian Davey told me it was because results needed to be first seen by the CAO and the Deputy Mayor before they were released. The CTA says that comparisons between years and to budget would be easier if the reports included staffing levels.
The CTA also criticized a lack of emphasis on cost control. They did not expand on what exactly they meant by this but the budget process has always had a strong restraint on the resulting tax increase. Perhaps they mean that maybe taxes don’t need to increase at all.
Walter, my friend, we could look at the ‘function’ of the CTA to come down to being the annoying nipping at the heels that eventually produces a change in behaviour, like the scenarios we see repeated in the big old world of nature which works well to empower natural selection. If they do that, they achieve what nothing else can, especially ineffectual elections.
Yes Manfred, my learned friend, the nipping may indeed bring results, apart from bloody heels.
Ineffectual elections? The big CTA guns, with a world of experience in business, did not run. Unlike Trump and Ford.
Loved the sentence in their newsletter pitying the Councillors who ‘may not come from a business background”.
What can you expect from mere former school principals and fire captains, huh?
Or perhaps like a friendly elephant that just keeps leaning on you until you move in the direction it wants you to go.
Bingo! You’ve got my drift.
Good points, hope we can implement them. Hard to argue with these.
We should let Ms. Sequin get her feet wet with the budgeting process. Draw on the budgeting experience of our new Mayor. Listen to the new Council. Listen to the CTA and other interested parties. And propose to Council a budget that is best for the town as a whole.
So Ms Seguin should have her budget plan already firmed up before learning of any of the details, a template into which most of the details should conform, and those that don’t, well … Sounds extremely rigid, sans flexibility, sans molding by details.
Well it appears that the CTA came up with a systemic improvement, eg. “Provide regular comparisons of performance to budget.” The proposal has some merit. In your comment above there is not a single suggestion of a systemic improvement from you. I haven’t made a systemic improvement suggestion because I have none. Obviously you have none either.
People people with no part in the process somehow always think they know better than the people who actually have the responsibility.
that’s a fair statement Bob, but sometimes those people actually try to get involved at the level where they can then actually bring their energies and ideas to the table, and be HEARD and taken seriously enough to make the difference they feel they can make. That can all start in places such as this blog, so let’s not ignore their serious efforts and intentions simply out of hand.
Manfred S., why don’t you give the new DM and council a chance first.
The new council not even sworn in yet and everyone ( mostly) all over them, including CTA.
I’m thinking that Seguin was the choice of the CTA.
Hi Manfred, Just wanted to let you know that as the new DM I am working on a plan and have done so for several weeks. People that have worked with me know that I rarely ‘stay the course’ especially when the established modus operandi needs improvement. I knocked on a lot of doors during the campaign, and Cobourg residents were very clear that communication with town hall needs to improve and that the budget must be much more transparent and sustainable. There will be an open budget meeting with the public coming soon.
Walter, I’m not sure what or whom you are aiming at here but I’ll take my shot and say that I’ve always tried to separate the office and the individual when commenting politically. Anyone in political office has the onerous task of listening to and working for people on both sides of an issue. That makes them vulnerable as an official but it should not impact them as an individual. I use the “office” designator instead of the individual’s name to try to maintain that separation. I will criticize the office most times and leave criticism of the individual for when I think the person, not the office they hold, is deserving of it. Hence, DM and not Suzanne or Seguin, in this case. It is NOT an indication of disrespect for the person, on my part.
Are you Seguin’s enforcer? Captain of the Spelling Bees?