There is a proposed 2.84% tax increase for 2007 City Taxes for the average property owner. This is the starting point and is the amount recommended by the Finance department.
The first meeting on the budget lasted 3 hours and was attended by 5 councillors and the mayor. The amazing part of the meeting was that there was 2 media reps there (Sun FM and Moringstar) who outnumbered the public (Don Quixote).
The council conducted a more intensive scrutiny of the budget than I have ever seen before and were actually asking valid line by line questions on the expenditure side of the budget. They have gone through the budget department by department and asked many questions that were either answered or were promised to be answered at another meeting. They only managed to get about 1/2 way through the departments and will be scheduling another meeting asap (possibly Monday?) to complete the expenditure side.
Not having access to the figures they were viewing made some of the questions hard to understand but most appeared valid and will become understandable when the public is given the line by line budget that will be tentatively approved later next week. In this regard I asked the Finance Manager to recommend to Council that the level of detail that was available in the 2006-2010 Financial Plan Update of Feb. 27 be made available to the public at least online even if a more compact summery was to be part of a hardcover council handout at the Budget public input session scheduled in early December.
The reporter from the Star managed to obtain a copy of the Green Sheets that the council were using to ask questions and therefore I see no reason why the rest of the Public should not have access to these sheets or the final amended ones prior to public budget input.
No votes by the 3 man finance committee (Lippert, Nicol, Cunningham) were taken and it seemed to be the intent to make one all encompassing formal recommendation rather than a piecemeal approach.
Little discussions on the revenue side were evident but hopefully these will be addressed at the next and subsequent meetings.
Although it is hard to know what questions to ask when the figures are unknown, I will endeavor to detail a list of questions that I would like to know the answers to in the hope that some members of council read my little Blog and will ask then at the committee or council level. (will be posting list by Sunday!)
At last years rate of 1% =143,000 then a 2.84% increase= $406,120.
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