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Pathway :: Home
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Are We a Corporation or a City? |
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Contributed by Jim Elliott
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Monday, 02 April 2007 |
The new city manager, Glen Davies, has outlined in his first budget the priorities as he sees it for the City of Regina. It includes three themes, customer service, contemporary employer and asset management. Where did the city of Regina resident go in his plans?
In the City of Regina budget plan, released on Friday and available to anyone on the city website, the city manager has identified three themes, customer service, contemporary employer and asset management. If you heard those three phrases, would you have naturally assumed it was talking about the city?
If there wasn't the interest in getting the public to comment on the budget and the fact that the rest of the budget document talks about recreation facilities, water & sewer works and transit and police services, one could easily be thinking about any large corporation in the country of Canada that produces widgets for consumption. And, in deed, the branding of this municipality as a corporation and distancing the operations of the city further and further away from the taxpayers and residents of this city is the direction things have been going for years. Citizens are becoming no more than shareholders that vote at annual meetings and have little to do with the direction of this city. Is that what people want?
In recent years, the citizens of this city have been systematically taken off committees. Only those people appointed by this current council are allowed on committees. If you tend to be critical of what they are doing, you are limited to your involvement to making presentations and being on the outside. If you are limited in your capacity to know what is going on, very little information is getting out there.
Case in point is this year's budget documents. It is 250 pages long. In past years, there was more detail and information. If you are capable of getting a copy off the internet, then you can print that off, at your expense. If you wish to get a copy, you have to call and get a copy, at the taxpayer's expense, mailed out to you, taking more time.
This budget document was released on March 30th. The budget will be approved on April 17th. People will have it a total of 12 1/2 days and must at that point if they wish to make a presentation to the special budget meeting on April 17th put your comments on paper, submit them to the city clerk's office by noon, April 12th and then come to the council chambers at 5:30 pm on April 17th and read what you have written.
During that same 12 1/2 days, you are to get all of your questions answered during office hours, that's 8 days of office hours. And you are still limited to putting in 10 minutes of presentation, about 3 pages of comment although you can provide more materials in your submission. In the past, the draft budget was made available in December. It was also available at committee meetings where the citizen had an opportunity to make presentations without the need for written presentations.
If you are lucky enough to find an item you are concerned about in the budget document, then you can easily see if they are doing what you wish. If you are looking at what the city police are spending our money on, then you have limited access in the city budget documents and have to go after people or other documents (CR07-04) now no longer on the city website.
So, is there a real interest in having many people wish to attend and make presentations regarding their city's budget?
Usually there are a few of us, myself, the Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and the Real Estate Associaition and a few citizens. If you want to have your 10 minutes in front of your elected officials and tell them your priorities, your thoughts and your wishes, then call the City Clerk's Office at 777-7262 and find out the procedure. Wouldn't it be interesting if we actually had 3 hours (18 presentations) of different visions of this city instead of the usual suspects.
By the way, the Public Library Budget and the School Board budgets are also being presented that same night. Those budgets are not available for the public until after the deadline for the written submissions is past.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 03 April 2007 )
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