Public Budget Consultation Meeting

Budget Head-Banging (One More Time . . . .)

The following is a verbatim transcript of Brian Clavier’s presentation to the budget “public consultation” meeting of city council on March 24, 2010. It’s instructive to compare these comments with the March 27 and March 31, 2009 posts, titled “Budget Consultation Presentation” and “Public Budget Consultation Meeting,” respectively. Click on the photo below to enlarge his speaking notes.
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I hope, uh, people have had a chance to take a look at the notes that I submitted yesterday afternoon. As you might expect, I do not have enough time to mention everything on those notes, but I will try and hit the high points.

This is the ninth time that I have made a presentation or attended a budget consultation meeting, and I think only Councillor Atkinson and the City Clerk have attended that many. And I find that I’ve had to repeat myself on many of those occasions, and so I’m going to do that today, for the people who haven’t been to as many budget consultation meetings as I have.

I’ve never asked the city to adjust its budget to benefit a specific organization. I’ve never asked the city to adjust its budget to benefit myself personally. I have asked the city to adjust its budget to benefit everyone in the city of Prince Albert - in fact, visitors as well - and that specific request (this is the sixth time I’m making it) is to paint the crosswalks at the intersections that have traffic signals. Four years ago I did a cost estimate, and it was around fifty-one hundred dollars then. It’s probably up to about six thousand dollars now. When I ask you to spend that amount of money painting the crosswalks, I’m asking because it’s a safety issue for everyone involved.

The traffic markings on most of our busy streets get painted twice a year. The traffic light intersection crosswalks have not been painted since 2007 [sic- 2006], and in fact those were done on Central Avenue, 1st Avenue West, 1st Avenue East that year, and they were done about twelve hours before it rained. So the markings didn’t last very long. The paint wasn’t very durable.

When I ask you to do it again - and I would not ask you to do that if I didn’t think that you could find the money somewhere else - and every time I’ve spoken I’ve always found savings in two particular locations. You’ll see those later on, under the category that I’ve described as “Disturbing,” and it’s disturbing because it’s always these two: it’s the golf course and it’s the police department, and it’s really difficult this year with respect to the police department because there are absolutely no numbers available to the public. This is the first year that’s happened.

The last time I spoke at this podium about a city budget I was amazed that I had to say that the city’s budget for fuel for its police vehicles was under one hundred dollars - for the entire year 2008. [See the March 27, 2009 verbatim transcript post - which may explain why the 2010 budget documents available to the public do not contain any breakdown of police expenditures: zero information equals zero potential for criticism.]

You’ll notice that I have a reference here to the fact that the Police Board decides the budget: city council does not get to make any changes to the allocations therein. On the other hand, city council does have the ability to say, “We are-- this budget is unacceptable right now, we are returning it back to you for revision.” You have that ability.

Last year it was the Dragonfly [remote-controlled] helicopter; this year it’s purchases of vehicles that really should be kept on the road a lot longer. It’s already been mentioned in previous discussions of the police budget at council meetings that surely, these police vehicles should be lasting longer than they do.

The other place - the golf course - and I’m going to specifically refer to “wetting agent, fungicide, and fertilizer,” four thousand, nine hundred and fifty dollars. If we have to have a golf course, then surely we shouldn’t be using chemicals on it to make it look pretty. There are golf courses in the world that are actually “green” - they don’t use water, they don’t use chemicals. I think that’s something that needs serious consideration.

The other thing I want to remind people about is the 3.5% cap that administration asked the departments and external agencies to adhere to. And it’s really important to note that only two have actually met that. The library - JMC - is 5% under last year’s request, and Wapiti [Regional Library] is 2.8% over. Everybody else - the previous speaker, for ins-- for-- for example: their organization is asking for . . . an increase of 31% compared to 2009. PADIDA [Prince Albert Downtown Improvement District Association] - and I think the councillor for ward four should actually excuse herself from this discussion [her day job is Executive Director of PADIDA. . . .] - is asking for 24% more this year. Even the Community Service Centre, for its two budgets, seniors’ transportation and special needs transportation, is asking for four-and-a-half and 3.6% increases. Apparently the request for holding the line at 3.5% gets ignored by everybody except the two institutions that have the most highly-educated staff.

The police are asking for 7.6% more, and ultimately the taxpayer’s being asked - the last number that I recall seeing when I went through the over-five-hundred pages of documents - was 6.6% from the taxpayer.

If you have any questions, I’d be pleased to answer, because my time is up.

Last Civic Election Commentary

Ward 2 Election Result Analysis

Voter turnout in 2009 was down throughout the city by 22.2% compared to 2006. In ward 2, the drop was almost identical (21.9%). The final count for the two candidates in ward 2 was 682 (or 66%) for the incumbent, Guy With Money (GWM), and 352 for me (34%).


How Can a Challenger Win in Ward 2?

There are 14 polls in ward 2, at eight polling places. I won only one poll (number 8), and one polling place (the Ukrainian Catholic Hall - 68 to 60). In order to beat GWM, I needed to win the two polls at the Ukrainian Catholic Hall and the three polls at Sacred Heart Cathedral by large margins (gaining at least 66% of the total votes cast - a feat achievable only with a large turnout, of primarily disgruntled citizens, since this area is neglected by GWM); lose by less than 10% at the two polls in Hazeldell and Nordale; win both the (small) poll at the YWCA and the advance poll; and get at least 45% of the votes at the six polls split equally among Northcote Manor, Carment Court, and Sherman Towers. [There’s no way for a challenger to beat GWM at these large PA Housing Authority apartments, simply because GWM has lavished their senescent residents with free meals, fruit, small appliances, and elaborate Christmas parties for many years, and he effectively courts the executive members of the three residents’ associations by attending as many of their meetings as he can.] Although these six polls include the surrounding neighbourhoods, turnout among the neighbours is minimal.


Failure on Every Front - Incumbent Wins

The advance poll was an accurate predictor of the final result: 66% for GWM to 34% for me. The [tiny] window of opportunity I thought I saw slammed shut an hour before the polls closed, when I realized the combined turnout at the west side churches was down over 30% from the last election. At the same time, there was very little change in the participating electorate at the six polls in the three Housing Authority buildings. In short, my potential supporters failed to show, while GWM’s core supporters did. The slim win at the Ukrainian Catholic Hall (8 votes) was easily negated by a 24-vote loss at the Cathedral (96 to 72, representing 43% support for me). Hazeldell and Nordale were disaster zones: I got 35% in Hazeldell, and just 27% in Nordale. Although the latter area’s landed gentry could hardly be expected to prefer an egalitarian, participatory democratic environmental crusader over a GWM who manages three shopping malls, I had not foreseen that the positive response I received at Hazeldell doorsteps had a severely diminished impact on people’s election-day activities. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I lost the YWCA poll 22 to 9 (giving me just 29% there), and the voters at the Housing Authority buildings (who turned out to be 40.8% of all ward 2 voters) favoured GWM over me by overwhelming numbers: 72% to 28% at Northcote Manor [where the highly vocal, totally-biased, energetic sycophant who presides over their residents’ association was surely instrumental in producing that numerical debacle], 74% to 26% at Sherman Towers [stunning because those two polls also include voters living on my home street], and 76% to 24% at Carment Court [whose residents received so many boxes of peaches from GWM in September they still hadn’t disposed of the empties by the time I got to their annual general meeting on October 1]. Most of the residents in these apartment buildings are seniors (the remainder are physically disabled), with their rent geared to their income, so the regular appearance of GWM doing his Daddy Warbucks philanthropic routine is a potent retained image when municipal election day rolls around.


Would I Do it Again . . . .

Yes - but I’d spend more time separating the truly undecided voters from the overwhelming number who refused to cast a ballot, then go back to the former at least two more times; find the money for some radio and weekly print ads; and save my pamphlets for people who actually intended to vote, rather than leave them at every household.

Special Post

Blog Reflections

Churches request, financial planners plead, and the media unceasingly demand that we think about what happened in the previous year as we prepare to decorate our homes with the new pictures on the wall that will accompany the passage of the next twelve months. In response to the dictates of the season, then, I offer these thoughts on my experience writing this blog for the past year.

I expected some angst poring over the keyboard on a regular basis, ostensibly donating to the public record, but three unwelcome surprises stand out: creating the posts was NOT easy, it wasn’t much fun, and the locals were under-represented in the reader statistics.


First - Blog Software Stinks!

This lesson [in theory, learned early on] whacked me over the head every time I tried to ensure that the visual aspects of the postings were as meaningful as the text. I’ve finally decided composing has to be done on word processing software - with the result printed, then copied into the blogspot composing window, since it takes far too long to go back and forth between the preview screen and the composing window to make sure that spelling and grammar are correct, line spacings are what was intended, highlighting is in the right places, and the type sizes give prominence to headings and subordinate status to photo captions.

Notwithstanding the headaches it caused, the software wasn’t nearly as annoying as the age-old phenomenon we call ‘writer’s block’: the best of intentions, material that Hollywood hacks would drool over, and oodles of available time still had to battle with the frequent inability to just sit down and type. Summer was difficult because I travelled every weekend for four-and-a-half months, and December was a total loss [the big “0” last month means I’m obliged to compensate by pummelling readers with at least six posts this month]. Still, I did succeed in creating 41 posts last year - most of them much longer, and way more time-consuming, than was originally intended.


And where’s the fun?

I never thought that blogging would be “FUN!” fun [like winning the $1000 from OrangeCrush/MuchMusic in an online contest in September], but I had hoped that the half-dozen bursts of genuine laughter that escaped my mouth as I carefully composed over two hundred pages of material would not be such isolated events. Trying to be fair to people helps explain why the phrases I created weren’t that humourous [even though much of what I write about falls into the I-can’t-believe-he-said(did)-that! category of pure nonsense], as does the need to avoid libel litigation. Deriving pleasure from writing tends to come from other people relating their experience with the text, but this shouldn’t preclude solitary chuckling [of the sane and sober variety] when the words and images are strung together. I’m not asking to be entertained by every second sentence, or to successfully mimic The Colbert Report, I just want to write something that keeps my eyelids separated until my eyes get to the end of it. Remember that the problem exists because city council meetings do get painfully boring [which is why I’m altering the blog format, to include only the 'noteworthy' items].


Local Readers: 140-character maximum?

It truly amazes me that less than 30% of the hits on the blog come from computers in Prince Albert [and almost 20% come from the United States. . . .] Granted, my family, friends, former colleagues, and acquaintances [plus people I just want to irritate] are spread out across the Americas and Europe, but I thought larger numbers of PA residents would show an interest in knowing more about this city’s politics and the farcical decision-making that dominates council meetings - especially since this was an election year, and my campaign literature [delivered to over 1600 Prince Albert residences and businesses] made multiple references to this blog.

While the blog’s content is accurately portrayed by the title at the top of each web page, you don’t have to look hard to see that it has subtexts to its subtexts; direct and oblique allusions to popular culture and historical events; diverse literary and academic references; and photographs that have been painstakingly composed and edited. This should [and does] make the blog appealing to a wider audience than if it presented dumbed-down, lowest-common-denominator quotidian drivel in one size of black ink. On the other hand, perhaps the limited local readership means there’s an issue with short attention spans that I’ve failed to adequately address. In any case, this possibility will not affect the blog’s future content. Look for more interesting, spicier stuff here in 2010.