A6

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Speak Up

Saint John councillors face a range of budget complications this year, from the financial impact of the recession to changes in the value of the property tax municipalities can expect to receive. Nonetheless, the budgeting process should be relatively easy.

Councillors have already established the objectives they want to achieve. The budget they devise must provide a roadmap for getting there.

If a proposed budget item will not bring the city any closer to its objectives, it is a legitimate target for cost-cutting.

This kind of pragmatism is a relatively new approach for Saint John, but one that councillors elected on a reform ticket have adopted with enthusiasm. Last year, they insisted on cutting the tax rate despite the objections of department managers. This year, they must realign the city budget to put more emphasis on public priorities.

The challenge is to do more without asking taxpayers to pay more.

In the past, council would have relied upon increases in the volume or value of taxable property to roll more money into the city's budget. This even occurred last year, when council benefited from $3 million in tax assessment increases - equivalent to a five-cent hike in the tax rate.

Thanks to recently enacted provincial protections for taxpayers, that kind of invisible tax-bill inflation is no longer an option. If councillors want to commandeer the full value of the increase in city property taxes, they'll need to hold a public vote on raising the tax rate - a step council as a whole has vowed to avoid.

What's left to councillors is the same basic budgeting that families across the city engage in every paycheque. Is this expense essential? Can we get by on less? How much money can we find in the budget to pay the cost of badly needed repairs?

Make no mistake about it, that is what council's most costly priorities consist of - badly needed repairs. Whether the topic of debate is water treatment, road reconstruction or the improvement and replacement of aging recreation facilities, the top issues councillors are wrestling with involve capital investments to reverse years of municipal neglect and deferred maintenance.

Like members of a family considering how to fix the plumbing, replace the roof or repair a dangerously eroding driveway with limited funds, councillors have little choice: they must free up whatever money they can and invest in effective, long-term solutions.