The CTA has done an analysis of the upcoming budget to suggest a few key areas that might lend themselves to further questions and analysis on the Capital and Operating Budgets. By asking these questions and turning down these requests for increased spending, we believe Council can bring in a zero tax increase. Here is the email sent to Council.
Dear Council
Last fall, the CTA put a lot of effort into a delegation regarding the town budget. Our intention was to assist Councillors with the analysis of a large and complex document and to more easily and effectively enable them to make better decisions about how citizens tax dollars were to be spent. As a continuation of this process, we have done an analysis of the upcoming budget to suggest a few key areas that might lend themselves to further questions and analysis on the Capital and Operating Budgets.
Attached are two PDF documents with questions about the the 2016 proposed budget spending.
The questions are arranged sequentially to follow the budget documents provided on the web site to make it easier to follow. We hope you will use this as a guide to ask these questions as well as formulate some of your own in these areas.
We understand the budget process is intensive and time consuming for Town staff and Council; however, we wonder why the budget was not completed and reviewed back in January. Individual department budgets could have been reviewed and given managerial approval prior to coming to Council for final approval. At this late stage, the budget appears to still be a wish list. It is impossible for Council to review it all properly, ask the questions, and approve it all in a few hours.
In these challenging economic times, we are also surprised to see the increase of 3.1% – instead of the zero dollar increase proposed by the CTA that would provide seniors and low/middle income families with discretionary funds that they could use to help boost our town’s economy.
I would be pleased to answer any additional questions you may have.
We thank you for your service.
Sincerely
Dennis Nabieszko
Secretary, Cobourg Taxpayers Association
2016 CAPITAL EXPENDITURES – QUESTIONS
2016 OPERATING EXPENDITURES – QUESTIONS
These are the Town documents that the above questions refer to:
2016 Draft Capital Budget Public
2016 Draft Operating Budget Public