The Budgeteers have delivered, albeit two months late. It is an underwhelming document (read it here) simply because of the lack of specifics as opposed to mantras and platitudes. To put it bluntly we could have saved $20,000 and a lot of volunteer labour by just recycling most of the “Free- Marketeer’s” comments from the various posts comments, on recent posts that have appeared on the “Cobourg News” website and put them into a 25 page report and send it off the Mayor!

OK enough of the cynicism, sarcasm and maybe a lot of admiration for the ten local Citizens who sat through five long meetings and the reading of over half a dozen background reports and only produced political statements. 42 recommendations and none of them original. We are not going to discuss all 42 recommendations but group them into a couple of financial moves none of them unexpected considering the opinions and background of the members.

To sum up the recommendations

• Users Fees – UP
  • Dramatically increase parking fees for the Non-Residents who want to use the Beach
  • Double user-fees for Non-Residents who use the Rinks and Parks and Concert Hall
  • Development and Engineering review fees go up to  a level of full cost recovery
• Outsource operations
  • Snow Plowing
  • Engineering/ Planning reviews
  • Concert Hall management/ operation
  • Community Centre
  • Cobourg Marina
  • Venture 13 Building
• Sell off and close operations of Municipal Assets
  • LUSI
  • Two Arenas
  • Surplus Land
  • Repurpose the Trailer Park
  • Close the Centennial Pool
• Make Town assets last longer before replacement
  • Lower Municipal Maintenance standards to conform with making assets last longer
  • Rewrite the Asset Management Plan to reflect a lower standard of replacements
• Put the boots to the Police
  • Remove the Capital cost for the new Police Station
  • Ask for discussions about:
    • West Northumberland Police Service
    • Contract with the OPP
• Revise the Transit operations
  • Install a ‘basic’ fixed route
  • allow ‘ride-sharing’ coordination

The list goes on but the problem we have is the constant refrain from the writers of the report that taxes are too high – an average of 6.63% for the past three years and the present Council is to blame. However none of the measures listed above have a cost reduction attached to them so we don’t know just how effective any of the measures are going to be as opposed to being just an ideological approach to budgeting! 

Give us some numbers Mr. Dexter!

The report is split into two parts, what the Council should do to to reduce costs, maybe for this year and a treatise about “Long-Term Sustainability”. This where the report goes off into the ether.  Admitting that there is a Municipal Liability called “Unfinanced Capital” which is about $14million. The report calls for a 1% tax levy for Capital Purposes which would  only raise $327,000 for the paydown. Also there is a problem with Asset Management replacement in that the gap between the needed funding and actual contributions creates an Annual Funding gap of $7.4million. A lot of unfunded liabilities!

As we see it the ongoing financial problems of Cobourg are substantial and cannot be fixed by a real tax increase of only 4% (1% is a Capital Levy) – 5% this year and the CPI plus 1% in future years. So while the time spent building this report should not be underestimated the lack of specifics, as opposed to future plans, about cutting costs for this tax year, in the report, definitely leaves us underwhelmed.