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Crunching the numbers
No matter how talented a municipal politician might be at saying and doing the right things to please the majority of his or her constituents, there comes an annual ritual during which he or she is pretty much guaranteed to irritate or downright anger large hunks of the population. And as you’ll see from the story on page 6 and the schedule in the left-most column on page 2, that time is rapidly approaching: the debating and drafting of the Township’s annual budget.
The managing of the budget process is a delicate one, so it’s a little surprising that the veterans on Council decided after last fall’s election to entrust the chairmanship of the Finance Committee to one of the rookies, Ward 2 Councillor Pat Molloy. But Mr. Molloy emerged relatively unscathed from his first trial by fire, so now, with one budget under his belt, he seems pretty well prepared for whatever the citizenry, or his fellow councillors, might toss his way.
What makes it more interesting for the chairman this time around, of course, is that one of the more controversial cost-cutting proposals on the table is to close the branch library (the Township’s only satellite library) in his ward’s largest community, Zephyr. It will be fascinating to watch how Mr. Molloy, and indeed all of Council, juggle that particular hot potato, and the budget for the library as a whole. As its proponents point out, Uxbridge’s library is one of the few in Durham Region to have not undertaken a major expansion over the last decade.
It is inevitable, of course, that a lot of the budget politicking goes on behind closed doors, but the formal meetings of the Finance Committee, at least, are all open to the press and the public. If your time allows, check out the schedule on page 2 and come down to the Town Hall for a session or two involving your favourite municipal service: the pool, the arena, snowplowing or roadbuilding. If you’ve never experienced it before, we promise it will give you a better understanding of how governments work than anything you might read in a newspaper or watch on TV.
The most important principle to keep in mind as the budget process unfolds is that, assuming Council is trying to minimize a tax increase, they will be holding the line on overall expenditures as much as they can. That means if something is being cut, something else is being increased. If a library allocation is being axed or a firehall postponed, it’s because the re-surfacing of Concession X is being given the priority, and the happiness of Concession X’s residents is being purchased with someone else’s anger. That’s why you can always tells it’s budget time by he way councillors keep looking over their shoulders. It will be a fun couple of months.
July 14, 2011
