Stephen Vance, Editor
Later this month, Meaford’s council will vote to approve the 2016 municipal budgets – that is if they’re done adding items. At their last meeting, our group of seven councillors almost seemed to be competing to add to the proposed increase in the 2016 operating budget, which as of the end of the November 23 meeting had risen from 1.2 percent to 2.084 percent in what seemed a matter of minutes. One councillor suggested that the increase should probably be increased to three percent if we ever plan to get ahead of the massive infrastructure needs in the coming years.
While councillors expressed a desire to inch closer to the magic two percent mark (which had been requested by council as a maximum increase) in order to put more money toward roads, perhaps they would have been better to have left the increase at 1.2 percent, and instead chop some of the frills.
The proposed plan to lease a small indoor swimming pool from a local condo board is a perfect example of $100,000 that could be eliminated in favour of moving those funds to roads and infrastructure.
I know people have expressed a desire to have a public indoor swimming pool in this town, but the reality is that small towns don’t have indoor swimming pools for a reason – they are too damned expensive. Every table, every study I have seen over the years indicates that, in order to adequately fund an indoor swimming facility, a municipality needs a population somewhere above 50,000. Meaford is about 39,000 residents short.
It is true that Owen Sound is also far from 50,000 people, yet they have an indoor pool, but regional facilities are a little different in that they might be located in one municipality, typically the largest in a region, and the facility serves a population well beyond 50,000.
Rather than leasing an indoor swimming pool that was not built with the intention of serving a steady stream of public users, why not admit that we are not a large urban centre, and focus on needs rather than wants. Meaford ratepayers are still recovering from several years of hefty increases to their municipal property taxes, and now is not the time for frills, let alone frills that are somewhat of a gamble from the outset.
While not very sexy, roads, bridges, pipes, and related equipment should be the focus of every spare penny of tax revenues for the foreseeable future.
If your driveway was falling apart, and your water pipes were leaky, and your basement foundation was beginning to crumble, would you look beyond those problems and instead add an indoor pool to your house? Or would you place your focus on the less sexy household infrastructure problems in order to ensure that your house would remain habitable for the coming years? I thought so.
The indoor pool isn’t the only frill currently included in the draft budgets for 2016, but it is certainly a perfect starting point if council is looking for items to cut from the budget. It wasn’t even on the radar two months ago, but now it is hogging close to a full percentage point of the potential two percent increase.
Council and staff have been referring to the roads preservation model approved by the previous council as if to say “it’s under control”, and while it is likely true that adhering to the preservation concept will eventually pay off as the municipality will ever so slowly improve the hundreds of kilometres of roads over the next decade or so, why not go above and beyond that model when we can? It would be a much wiser investment than sinking – and I suspect truly sinking – money into projects like indoor pool leases.
I’m not suggesting that staff, or standard programs should be cut, but I bet if council put their minds to it, they could find another few hundred thousand dollars to put toward infrastructure by simply zeroing in on carving some of the frills.
That said, anyone who thinks that we should expect to hold the line on tax increases in coming years should probably think again. I suspect that even if council were to find the same enthusiasm for cutting as they recently showed for adding, we’re still going to require annual increases of one to three percent each year just to stay ahead of true infrastructure needs.
But for now, let’s leave the wish lists for Santa, not the ratepayers.
