In the Cobourg News we have a summary of the second Budget Review day. This day was supposed to be the day that the Mayor would make his stand on cutting services to reduce the tax rate. Looking at the additions to the list of next year's expenses - centennial pool, trees, beach mat and more, he did not win the day. In addition his idea of getting an Assistant so he could go off and lobby other levels of Government for more money did not succeed. All he managed to do with that suggestion was to impugn the knowledge of Staff capabilities and competence held by other members of Council. "I find the statement made by the Mayor to be offensive" made by DM Beatty and paraphrased by me.

Excellent work by Meghan Thomas in making the case for the retention of the Centennial Pool for this year and now we have to convince the public to get behind a campaign to keep it permanently.

However in setting the final tax rate at 6.6% and having removed the Storm Water Management fee the Budget is still "deceitful". The total impact on the Citizens' pockets will be an increase of 12.6%! Probably an average of $350.

But back to the Budget Review - Mayor Cleveland pushed for items not supported by some of the Council and when I watched a little bit of the proceedings it was noted that the DM and the Mayor obviously had different ways of looking at things. Mayor wanted to add and the Deputy wanted to reduce. One example was the funding of a Strategic Plan. Mayor wanted $20,000 to do, as he said "The job properly." The DM motioned to reduce that to zero and let the Staff lead discussions, the Mayor countered by saying "to do the job properly it should be $100,000, $20,000 would barely do the job." The DM's motion failed.

The controversial motion to increase Council compensation barely passed, but the increase will be phased in two parts. Let's see if a decent wage for Cllrs will increase the quality of the candidates next time around.

The Mayor did manage to persuade the rest of Council that the wizardry of a revamped website will reduce the communications demand on the "overworked Staff". Sounds like he is 'house-trained' already. If he really believes that a better website will do this he should provide examples of a good Municipal website that does this.

In conclusion we have wait for the results of the review, over the next year, and the final tax bylaw next week

Just this week an example of how much politics has changed emerged from the ether of the Internet to the bowels of the Council Chamber in Cobourg.

As explained in a previous post a suggestion was made by the Town Staff person in charge of Community assets, to close the Centennial Pool on Charles St. This is an outdoor pool that has been deemed as ready for renovation or replacement.

Then along came a concerned Citizen. Meghan Thomas started an online petition obviously not knowing the impact or effect. Nobody knows these things when starting a petition. It must have struck a nerve because within hours over a thousand people had signed it. Not in the traditional sense of a paper people collected petition but a cyberspace one. Asking people to click on a website is much easier, for both the collector and the signee. As the petition grew larger the more concerned Council was about it. In the age old tradition of "shooting the messenger" one Cllr tried to dismiss the petition because "50% of the people who signed were not Cobourg residents". Who cares they are users and pay the admission fees.

But back to the way politics will be changed by this instant display of participatory democracy. With emails replacing letters and websites dedicated to instant response the local Pols better be aware of just what is going on.

What's next? I fear that the Council in it's desire to bury this topic will defer the suggestion to close the pool. However without a comprehensive discussion of how important the pool is to the Citizens that decision is just "cowardice in the face of the enemy". Cobourg needs to decide now whether a pool is important to them. If it is then a renovation programme must be implemented or we just fill it in for more parking.

We elected people to be imaginative - well Council get imaginative and design a fundraising programme for a new pool. Cutting the budget is easy, building things is much harder!

 County looking at Northumberland Police Force,

Every few years this old chestnut appears - just like a zombie the idea of a County/Regional Police Service refuses to die.

The idea may succeed this time, the proponents - the people in short pants ( those Councillors with no or little experience of local politics) have proposed the idea; "Brighton Mayor Brian Ostrander made a  motion to “approve a budget of $75,000 to retain a consultant to update the 2007 ‘Policing Study Final Report for Northumberland County’" Supported by the "short panters" the new Mayors of Cobourg and Port Hope.

The new Mayors of Port Hope and Cobourg may approach politics differently because of their relative youth and "new approach to politics" (some may call this lack of experience) but they will soon hit the reality of Regional Policing. That reality is that Police Service as we know it in the Suburbs is very different from the Rural Areas. The major difference is that Suburban policing cost more than the Rurals.

On one hand you have, usually a five minute response time to all calls, in the Towns, as opposed to "phone your call in and we may get to you in a couple of days" in the Rurals. The allure of cutting bureaucracy may be appealing to the new Mayors, obsessed with cost-cutting and efficiency but will that win over the the rural Councillors?

It could get very messy for Cobourg for as we know the CPS is heavily subsidised by the operation of the "Business Unit" will Cobourg be willing to subsidise the rest of the County with that income? Are there enough new Councillors in Port Hope to overcome the traditional aversion to any talk of amalgamation with Cobourg? After all these types of shared service talks have consistently failed over the years, even Hamilton Twp dumped the idea after a couple of years of sharing.

So we look forward to the revised report and the subsequent discussion. The report will have to come up with more than an updating of the numbers because those of us who remember the last report will recall that it wasn't the numbers that killed it but the reduction of service in the Towns that would have taken place.

Another Budget Surprise

Town to close the Centennial Pool! - that was one of the headlines to emerge from the recent Budget discussion. A couple of comments were made on the Draper report and then a "Change.org" petition was started by Meghan Thomas, a concerned Citizen. Sign the petition here.

BUT checking the Town's website a contradiction appears about the ownership of the facility. One of my friends, who died a few years back - Bill Duncan - told me how the Lions Club had been involved with the fundraising and subsequent construction of the pool in 1967. There must be somebody left in the Town who remembers such a thing but what interests me is what happened after the opening in 1967. Was the pool taken over by the Town? Or was the pool taken over by the local "YMCA"?

On the Town's website on its "Pools" page link here the first paragraph reads - "We have one outdoor public pool beside Victoria Park and the Cobourg Waterfront. This pool is owned and operated by the Northumberland YMCA. Located at 42 Charles Street, it's during the summer months."  So what is it - who owns the Pool?

The answer became very clear after a check with one of the Town Councillors, he sent the message "The website is wrong as usual with things on there. I know they are going through the website revamp at moment at least. This is what the budget sheets say: "YMCA staff maintain and operates programs at Centennial Pool. Town owned facility" it cost us $ 97,661 for the Y to run last year and I believe their members use it for free and others have to pay for it." So it is settled  - the Towns owns it!

NO matter who owns it the fact that the announcement was made , as a 'fait accompli', without public announcement or discussion and definitely before a replacement was planned, the withdrawal of such an important facility is disturbing to a lot of people.

On the petition page Meghan announces that she is going to go to Council and make the case to keep it open. We at the BurdReport wish her luck.  Because the Town owns the pool then a case has to be made to Council just how important the pool is to people and more discussion about the closure and/or replacement has to take place.

The BurdReport has learned that the pool was due to be decommissioned next year due to increasing maintenance costs and age. The notice to close the pool in this year's budget shows a lack of understanding basic communication principles from all concerned. If in fact the pool is obsolete how is it that the case for a fundraising programme to replace it hasn't been made public yet - if one exists! It is obvious to all that many Citizens will be impacted and have expressed a desire to keep it open. After all nearly 1000 people signed the online petition in just a few hours.

Obviously this is now a complicated case and until the public has all the facts Council should not accept a Director's recommendation to close it without public input from all concerned.

When is a large tax increase not a small tax increase? When you add a Fee

 

Storm water management does anybody know what it is and how we pay for it?

Well the Citizens of Cobourg will soon find out just how deceitful (not my words but another commenter) Council has been and the result is that a huge increase will be coming down the pipe (no pun intended).

Cobourg, until this year has always repaired and rebuilt the Storm Water System (SWM) and paid for it out of the Public Works budget. But way back when, at least six years ago the Province mandated "Asset Planning” for all of the assets of the Town. In other words the Town had to estimate the life of every piece of infrastructure that it owns and amortise replacement costs over the asset’s useful life. The asset had to be depreciated and money set aside for the eventual replacement of the asset.

Well the chickens have come to roost in a big way for SWM. A report was prepared by Watson & Associates that listed all the repairs needed and the estimated life of each asset in the inventory as well as the replacement cost and when that cost should come due. So far so good!

In the first meeting of this new Council, this year, it voted to adopt the payment schedule for 2023 as well as a ratifying a procedural move, established by the passing of two bylaws late in the dying days of the previous Council, these moves have been described as "deceitful". This new charge will never again appear on the Town's ledger as a Public Works item. It will be handed over to the Water Dept of the Local Utility.

The total value of our SWM assets is $70 million dollars and the annual amount of money needed to maintain them will be $1.6 million. The amount of money spent last year, money allocated in the Town's 2022 budget was as disclosed by a commenter on the "Cobourg News" website, "The cost of stormwater management in the 2022 budget was $508,100 (about 2% of the levy). The approved 2023 stormwater charge is $1,620,726 (about 6% of the 2022 levy). So we’ll be paying about $1.1M more for stormwater in 2023 than in 2022. The total of the proposed 2023 levy plus the approved stormwater charge is about 11% more than we paid in 2022."

HOWEVER, this money - the new "fee" will raise $1.6 million and will not be a budget item as the 2023 budget line for SWM is only increasing by 0.1%. So how does the Town get the $1.6 million it needs to pay for SWM maintenance?

In an exchange of comments on the same topic in the same thread it was stated: "Yes, the increase in stormwater fees is $1.1M or 4% of the 2022 levy. However, the approved plan is to collect $1.6M outside of the levy. The $0.5M collected in the 2022 levy will still be collected but under a different name in 2023. This means that the total tax increase is 6% of the 2022 levy. This is in addition to the 5% levy increase due to other spending increases for a total tax increase of about 11%."

This is why the manoeuvre by Town Council is described as "Deceitful". The Town will pass a budget increase of 5% (proposed so far) and claim that it is less than inflation and "look what a good job we have done in keeping taxes low". But the SWM 'fee' of $1.6 million will be off the books and collected by Lakefront as part of our water, sewer and hydro bills.

So the question is very simple! Did the previous Council understand what they were doing when they passed the Storm Water Rates bylaws (Bylaws 047-2022 and 048-2022)? ? If they did they certainly didn't explain it very well and certainly not in a transparent way.

The bottom line here is that the new Council, and especially the new Mayor, because he has wrested the Budget away from the General Governance person, the usual budgetmaker - the Deputy Mayor (it should be noted that the DM has been the usual budgetmaker but others have done it in the past) - will have to wear the possibility of the largest tax increase in living memory of Cobourgers. 

What can we do to correct this problem:

• Read this for a start – a letter to the Ed from Ken Strauss
• email all members of Council and tell them you think this fee is wrong and suggest they find a way to fix it

Another tradition destroyed

The new Mayor of Cobourg warned us he would be different, and one of his first actions shows it. I am talking about his decision to cancel the Mayor's New Year's Levee and replace it, two days later with a 'meet and greet'. His reasoning is that because it is a Sunday Staff will have to be there overnight - where he got that from nobody knows probably from the Staff who don't want to work on the weekend. Just remember we have had Levees on the Weekends for years!

Just one adjustment to this post, the reference to the Town Crier was wrong - She is being allowed to be there and cry. How that will fit in with a bunch of people at a soiree is to be determined by those who are there eating off charcuteries and sipping wine. 

Now I realise that sometimes cultures and traditions have to be changed to reflect changing times but in order to remain constant some traditions should stay. But this change is one change too far. No more trudging up the Vic Hall stairs to be met by a line of people starting with berobed Mayor and the phalanx of Councillors. No more staid speeches, no more Town Crier, no more Poet Laureate, no more uniforms, no more Concert Band tunes, no more meeting of the usual Town personalities and the greatest crime of all - no more egg salad sandwiches. These will be replaced by a Jazz band and wine to be sipped by people standing around as the tradition of eating those sandwiches at round tables  is offensive to the 'New Order'.

I also realise that the new mayor dislikes the trappings of office, he had to be reminded by the last mayor that he should wear the chain of office at official times. He also appeared on Remembrance Day without a tie - a total lack of respect for the occasion. But this is one change he should hear about from his Citizens.

Now perhaps I am both dating myself and showing up as a 'behind the times fuddy-duddy' but the destruction of the Occasion - the Levee, is too much. This move will be unique, Has Queen's Park cancelled theirs, has Ottawa cancelled theirs - No. I bet the Town Crier will be crying about not having to write a new Cry. The Concert Band will now have to find something else to do on New Year's Day and the Mayor will not have to stand in front of his people and be accountable with his speech for the New Year - sad.

My usual visit to the Dentist

For many years I have been using a Dentist in Mexico. Going to the Dentist is usually an endeavour of confidence. Well I have the most confidence in my Dentist, here in the Plaza. An ambitious businessman he has graduated from being a partner in a dental office to a solo operator and then this year he is now leading an office of five people and recently moving into the most modern office I have ever seen.

Anyway to cut to the chase, I needed a tooth fixed. One of my oldest and most filled teeth lost a piece of its side a few weeks ago. Nothing painful or life-threatening so I decided that Arturo could fix it when we arrived in PV. 

I arranged a visit and went for the prep work yesterday. "I will grind the tooth away and give you a temporary filling." Eighty minutes later I walked away with an epoxy stump and an appointment for the next day to finish the job.

Impressions from this exercise: Arturo is not that busy - perhaps waiting for the Tourist rush in the next three months, his prices have risen - probably to pay for his new office and the service is both immediate and impeccable.