I wish, as a Guelph citizen and tax payer, to address numerous budget concerns prior to your decision making process next week. I had registered early on Monday as a delegation for tomorrow’s public input meeting, but after the Monday council meeting proceedings relating to proposed IT expenditures, I felt that it would be impossible to adequately comment in the brief five minute period allotted, so I cancelled and am substituting this email.
By way of perspective, I am a retired public servant, and am fortunate to have a professional managed pension into which I paid just under 9% of my income for nearly 30 years. In the early part of my career I was laid off for nearly three years when my job became redundant during a severe recession in the early 1980s. Subsequently, I consumed all my savings to retrain in another less desireable career as a stop gap until I was able to find another job. By then I was 33 years of age.
My parents were not rich having raised 5 children on a single lower middle class income, so I paid my own way thru university(Univ of Guelph..Fish and Wildlife Biology B.Sc, then Aquatic Ecology…M.S. Univ. of Toronto) with minimum wage or lower jobs).
In short, I have learned the importance of budgeting, carefully considered financial strategies, and living within my means in order to achieve my goals under difficult circumstances, having managed my family budget out of debt to surplus over the past 35 years.First I have no boats in front of my house which is the norm for most property owning Guelphites. In fact, while visiting garage sales, a few years back to save on the cost of material goods, I saw many boats for sale in front of houses. However, I freely admit, that I did splurge and buy a brand new Toyota Corolla 4 years ago once my mortgage was paid off. Prior to that I bought only used cars to save money… to pay off debt as rapidly as I could…as mortgage rates during this period ranged from 17% to about 7%. This meant few restaurant visits, mostly staycations…in short I did what I had to do to live within my means without compromising the essentials.
Since I moved to Guelph some 24 years ago, my Municipal tax has risen just shy of 400%( I did move from one house to a larger one so I have also adjusted that figure for the additional assessment), and by next year it will have exceeded 400% if the budget increase of over 3.5% is concluded). So that extra 90$, $100, $113, $150 each year,at close to twice the inflation rate creates an exponentially growing cost to every property owner, and business that is subject to the terms of the Municipal tax laws introduced well over a century go. This has been the single largest % increase in my range of household expenses….and I have some difficulty seeing where services have increased or improved proportionately. If I determine where my salary would be if I were still working now, my salary would have increased by slightly less than 200%… to put things in perspective.
At the same time,even with much lower mortgage and personal loan interest rates, than occurred during my period of indebtedness, the middle class is falling behind with ominous implications. After all, without a financially healthy middle class, spending their shrinking discretionary income, many businesses will have to lay off employees, their will be defaults on mortgages, and credit card debt, etc. a very tragic and slippery slope to disaster for the poor of society who depend on the tax revenue from the properties that are vacated and abandoned by the middle class, and the businesses fueled by them. Yes it has happened in the USA…a sobering case study …and it can happen here..as the earning power of the middle, middle class is gradually being sapped and transferred to higher income earners.
If you are not convinced about the seriousness of the situation pertaining to the middle class tax payers, read the reports of the Bank Of Canada.
Here are some of the verifiable stats.
Average Ontarian household debt excluding mortgage $15,000
Average Canadian Household debt including mrtgag $112,000
Average Canadian Univ Graduate Student Debt $145,000
Average Canadian Mrtgage Debt under 45 yrs old $129,000
Avg Canadian Mrtgage Debt 45 to 64 $102,000
Avg Canadian Mrtgage Debt over 65 $66,00020% of Canadian must borrow to pay living expenses
40% say they will be unable to pay their mortgage by age 65
45 % anxious about credit card debtSymptomatic of the above realities listed above is record earnings by the big Canadian banks even while interest rates remain at historic lows.
As well as this very serious situation with household debt, we have government spending at all levels reaching serious levels.
Ontario debt 237 billion but will be 275 billion when the McGuinty government claims it will have its budget balanced. This costs Ontarions 10 billion in UNPRODUCTIVE interest each year.
Federal debt 600 billion.
These last two items leave every working Ontarion/Guelphite with or without personal debt with an additional $50,000 in indebtedness…. that would be $100,000 in my household…so it is with a note of considerable agitation that my elected representatives have shown considerable irresponsibility with my (and others) tax dollars. How can I trust and respect elected officials and their staff to act responsibly with money..especially when Mr. McGuinty’s government recently squandered nearly 3 billion dollars, with little benefit to the majority citizens of Ontario in a failed IT undertaking with eHealth(ie: failure to periodically monitor spending behaviour and productivity of staff), Ornge Air ambulance services,and cancelled gas-fired electrical generating stations(ie failed to consult local residents for approval).
So that brings me to your difficult task of managing the budget for our services here in Guelph for the year 2013. I hope what I have written here allows all of you to understand the serious financial situation facing the majority of the middle class, what is with high probability at stake if spending is not reigned in. It’s a nice comfy feeling to have a full slate of 20 firefighters at $100,000 each in the new south end fire station built to service a community much larger than currently exists. I shook my head last year when Mr. Bell’s effort to explain that perhaps we could do without 6 of them at a savings of $600,000 was met with resistance by Ms.Piper who claimed the higher ground of public safety which was met by the usual block on council that voted in favor of the, in my view unnecessary, expenditure. So it mystifies me why you collectively would not support the continued plowing of city sidewalks for the same reason…safety ( how many elderly folks with brittle bones are critically injured by slipping on icy walkways each year) for a relatively nickle and dime figure, much less than $600,000 (excluding any fire equipment required to furnish these new hires in subsequent years)..just $100,000 assuming as Ms. Hofland remarked there are not additional expenses related to enforcement and lawsuits. But what about the sections of sidewalk not in front of a residence..do you propose to lift the plow onto a flatbed trailer and move it a few hundred metres or less to the section of walkway in front of green space. As it is most residents in my neighbourhood are very timely in removing snow from our sidewalks including those on holidays or physically unable ,usually within an hour or two of the end of snowfall because we recognize the importance of maintaining access for the many that need to use the sidewalks. But the sections in front of green space normally do not get this citizen service. I can’t help but think this reduction in service was proposed by Mr. McCaughen to blunt the outrageous request for 1.5 forestry personnel at $260,000. Did you know that we already have a forestry person by the name of Randy Drewery. Also, Murray Cameron has extensive knowledge in this specialty. Now you want to increase this area of personnel (remember it’s salary and benefits which are our greatest cost pressure in this city) by 250%. No wonder we can’t control our costs. The average salary in Ontario for a forestry tech is $45,000. So an entry level should be even less. With benefits the proposed cost of the new personnel should be closer to $80,000..so what about the other $180,000…a slush fund for the Operations department, although I suspect there is yet another vehicle cost in there. Can employees not share vehicles..there are so city vehicles around the city now? By the way with respect to Firefighters at $100,000. There are no shortages of very highly qualified firefighters. Recently, I spoke to a very able, highly qualified recently graduated female firefighter who participated in the September Fire Fighter Appreciation Day competitions in Milton, and outshone many of her male counterparts. When I mentioned that the entry level firefighters in Guelph make $100,000 with benefits, she corrected me saying that the starting salary is closer to 50 to 60 thou. That’s a big gap for the tax payers of Guelph.
Finally, the proposed IT expense bonanza. I’m sure that their will be some advantages for improved efficiency with an expertly designed IT business system for the communication and operation of the city of Guelph. But I have painful memories of the great cost of building the new Guelph Civic Centre, for which I as a citizen was not consulted. In addition, the council at the time claimed that the cost of the building would be offset to a degree by greater efficiency with employees closer together and not scattered all over the city. My translation of greater efficiency means more cost efficiency,which in term would dampen the rate of tax increases. Well on average,that hasn’t happened..but council and the employees have a very nice spacious, comfortable place to work on the tax payer’s tab. In fact, with all the additional hires, including HVAC technicians at well over $110,000 each, as well as the million dollar grounds maintenance cost per year subsequently associated with the new Civic Centre…I`m a little cynical about the justification and assertions for latest extraordinary IT expenditure proposal. I do not understand why this initiative needs full time with benefits business system software architects instead of contractees. These systems do require very expensive professionals, hopefully experienced with successful outcomes in other municipalities, but once built, could be maintained by less creative and expensive professionals. Once again it seems there appears to be little concern to control costs over the longer term as it is someone elses hard earned money at stake. And what if the efficiencies ( ie reduced staffing and or costs) promised by Norah Prior for these MUST HAVEs, never materialize….who is responsible for compensation to the tax payers of Guelph for the failed projections..
In conclusion, I have said a lot here….and I hope you have had the patience to read and respectfully appreciate, and are empathetic to, my concerns about runaway costs. There is a lot at stake, if the ongoing exponential growth in our taxes continues unabated as it becomes increasingly a moral and ethical question. It is clear that other levels of government, given their debt, can be relied upon to make up for cost overruns here in Guelph or any other municipality for that matter( I know that many other Municipalities have expense issues as well).I don`t think any of us want to reach the point when the loss of substantial part of our middle class or local business`s, ability to pay taxes because of a broad based financial crises, leads to forced reduction in our critical basic services as a result of current indulgences in, “nice to haves“, rather efficiently run basic services without excesses in compensation for our employees. BB