Playing withthe taxpayers' money
It happens all the time, those without a lot of money become spendthrifts once they have their hands on the public till. Cobourg has the Frink and the Community Centre, both imposssible projects on their own but throw in public money and we watched the green stuff fly.
Port Hope is a very good example of "our eyes are bigger than our stomachs" syndrome. This small municipality already charges its homeowners a large sum of money to live there, some say the highest taxes are in PH, but with MPAC calculations comparitive tax rates are had to figure out. But high taxes don't seem to faze the good burghers and we have the image of a cashflow problem with the taxpayers paying for an 8million overdraft carrying charges. An (un)expected 9million over-run on the sewage treatment plant, a controversial buy of agricultural land for a business park and now the prospect of untold millions in future liability if the harbour is purchased for the 'bargain price' of $300K. Oh I forgot - if you add in the full implementation of the Police Services Board report on bringing the Service up to Provincial standards another 6million.
Yet not one word of this financial puzzle from either the incumbents or the candidates for this Fall's election. Can we presume that the citizens of PH either don't know or don't care? This we do know is that at least one member of Council is in favour of the harbour purchase even going so far as to suggest that PH buy its own dredger instead of using Cobourg's (They hate to pay for anything that comes from Cobourg!).
So with only the 'usual suspects' decrying the financial goings-on the BurdReport wonders what it will take to have a debate about this.
9 comments:
.... the first tax bill!
Port Hope council has dug a huge hole for the town to get out of and seems intent to continue to dig even during an election year.
There is an $8 000 000 overdraft with no plan to repay it. They are considering expanding water service north of the 401 into parts of Ward 2 (Welcome) and some parts of council are pushing to take over the waterfront from the Feds. The Feds will pay the town $300 000 to take over this piece of property that is falling apart and unusable until after the Port Hope Iniative has completed their LLRW project.
Where is the money supposed to come from? This town has received federal money so often that council seems to think that is a never-ending tap.
I agree - where is the outrage?
Just a point of clarification to Ben's post. The $300K is not a purchase price, but rather monies to be paid by the feds TO the town to take the harbour off its hands.
Yep you're right I got it wrong, the feds will pay 300k to offload a multi-million liability. Some deal
why is it that we always seem to react in the negative direction when an issue comes along that has big numbers attached to it? Every municipality in this province continues to plod along, regardless of the apparent failures of the top echelons, council after council after council, and the sky has not crushed them nor the waves washed them from the face of earth. New and ardent "representatives of the people" line up to seize the reins and show everybody how it's done, only to suffer the same, repeated fate as all of their predecessors. Then one day, the full details of a past decision surface and the decisions made are hailed as "exemplary forethought" or something like that, with praise coming from the beneficiaries of those decisions, and that is the community as a whole. Sure, mistakes are made, but none are terminal and subsequent changes help to mitigate the negative consequences, the time frame being the only issue, in the end. You've got to wonder at the wisdom of those who make grand and voiciferous proclamations of foolish decisions and actions, basing them on, at best, only a fraction of the relevant information that's available to those who are actually making and have made the decisions. These opiners are not often proven wrong because their contributions are rarely put to the test, and of course, for the same reasons, they're seldom proven to be right. I sure wish I was as smart as they believe they are.
They a nut's to take it over , and sell there waterfront land to camaco tomorrow why not lease it to them . they are fools not to !
So trying2makesense would like everyone to just applaud while our council drives us into the economic ground thus sending our property taxes skyrocketing, just because they haven't yet bankrupted the place?
Well if they didn't take the 300k they would not of had the moey to pay capt cobourg they were some people trying to stop it many people are go for holiday's we can not take 4 more years of this , and the mayor stopped the public from askind qestions a god damm shame .
Tompson say's there lot's of money . Well it is not her's she is nut's .
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