Finance Committee starts up

Did you know that you can go to Council to ask questions about the budget?

Well, not really a budget but a financial plan that assists more spending.  Tonight, they determined the Rec Commission didn't spend all of their allocated funds so had to give back $97,000 but don't worry our Council will not let a penny of your taxes go unspent.  Horror! They could have left it unspent and lowered the spending the following year.

Here is what they will share with the public:

The Presentation:
http://www.cnv.org/attach/2013%2010%2007-FC-PP.pdf

An extremely macro view of the budget:
http://www.cnv.org/attach/2013%2010%2007%20item%2007.pdf

and;

http://www.cnv.org/attach/2013%2010%2007%20item%2007%20attach%2001.pdf

The October 21st Council meeting will continue a series of Finance Committee public hearings where you can have your say.  I was of two people, the past president of the Lower Lonsdale and past candidate for Council in 2008, complained about police response time and questioned on whether the Council had cut the number of officers.  He was assured that was not the case.

I asked whether the tax decrease in the last budget meeting of last year to rebalance the residential and business taxes had partially gone to apartment buildings who are actually hold city issued business licences.  I had called on Council to give more tax relief to actual businessess hoping that actual small businesses would get a higher level of tax relief.  The Council decided in the middle as usual but I was more concerned that the tax relief has partially gone to large corporations rather than struggling small businesses. The Finance Director informed me that apartment buildings although registered as a business are categorized by residential so rather than business so they were not only not getting a tax break but paying more.

Sometimes the question has to be asked even when you don't get the answer you expect.