The budgeteers that is! A new ad-hoc committee previously announced was revealed to the Community on Wednesday 9th September, with the mandate of preparing budget recommendations to the Mayor and Council. The committee will report back in early October.

 

In the presser this morning the Mayor made a speech – hyperbolic to the extreme – “Let me start by welcoming you here today for this momentous occasion. “I say momentous because it is truly historic, as I believe this Mayoral Budgetary Task Force is the first of it’s kind in Cobourg’s long history!” and then handed over to Mr. Dexter for his remarks and then the floor was opened to questions. After a couple of questions about financial machinations a question was asked that revealed a lot about the Mayor and his attitude toward his voters.

Question: will the backgrounds of the committee members be released so that the Community can see if there is a diversity of opinion amongst the members of the Committee?

Answer: David interviewed 33 people for the Committee and selected ten people whom he thought was a reflection of Cobourg opinion.

Whether this will satisfy the Community that there really is divergent opinion on the Committee is yet to be determined, however the Mayor really did stick his foot in it when he admitted that “This Committee cannot represent all of the people in Cobourg just the ones who applied!” This may or may not be true but certainly it appears that little effort went beyond the applicant pool. Just for the record for all those “gender balancers” There are six males (seven if you count the Chair) and four females on the Committee.

Question to Mr. Dexter: when the recommendations are formalised and the Committee reports back to the Mayor in October, will the Mayor have a Veto on any of the recommendations?

Answer from the Mayor: No I will receive them and present them to Myself and the Council at the same time.

Now for the interesting and unsaid part. In his sum-up the Mayor hoped that these recommendations would lead into the next election as he is still hot to trot to pin where our money goes – to the County and other organisations. Also he hopes to instil an attitude change as he wants to force the voters to think about “financial fiscal reality” – as he sees it. It is obvious that that his previous election slogan of “Only being a one-term Mayor” is seemingly going to be forgotten. This Task Force will be his ride to the Promised Land!

The Members of the Task Force are:
Community Led Task Force members: info profiles scraped from Facebook and Link’dIn

David Dexter (Head of Task Force)	Director of the Hospital Foundation. bio here
Anthony Dew	Chief Operations Officer at Stalwood Homes
Peter Dounoukos	Advertising Mogul at local radio station
Chrystalla Manna	Small Business Person – JJs Burgers
Susie Stoltenberg	Principal at Clear Point Communications
Mark Mills	Former candidate for Cobourg Council Background here
Susan MacDonald
Ken Strauss	Local Tax-Fighter formerly employed at OPG
Esther Schroeder
Dick Kauling	Chair, Director Food Bank Operations Cobourg Fare Share
Al Switzer	REALTOR®; at Royal Heritage Realty Ltd

We at the BurdReport don’t know how these people will handle the task, and just how many of these people are advocates of public services as opposed to being ‘free-marketeers’ but we are fearful of the end result. In other words will the “low-hanging fruit” be the end result and we will be selling the silverware to pay the bills. The Mayor stated he “wants maximise our current assets’. So look for sales of current assets; The Marina, LUSI, the Trailer Park and the big one – Northam Industrial Park. But the big problem will be one of transparency. If we are only going to be presented with a ‘wish-list’ of financial options the way these options were created should be known. The Committee meetings should be open to the public and even Councillors if they want to be there.