Interesting day. We now know there will be a special public budget meeting tomorrow, Wednesday Feb. 01, to allow council to make their decisions for the budget and tax rate. There seems to be several views in play as to how we got in this mess and how we get out.
Today I raised the issue of an unfair provincial property taxation system that takes wealth from the economic powerhouse that Saint John is and re-distributes that wealth around the province in the name of Equal Opportunity; others say forcefully that there is also the widely held belief that we are over staffed at City Hall and that there should be serious work done on inefficiencies and productivity before we cut back services in the name of job reductions caused by budget cutbacks, and finally the wider higher minded idea that as a single community stretching from Quispamsis to Grand Bay, we should be under one municipal government.
I hope to help open a discussion over the next several days that will:
- evoke a more thoughtful approach to the root causes of our civic woes;
- pursue real facts to demonstrate how those things are holding back our Urban dreams;
- lastly to bring together a broad group who want to take real action to move this community forward with pride and security in a way that allows us to realize our aspirations for Saint John as New Brunswicks' only "true Urban metropolis" as my good friend Kurt Peacock so correctly describes it.
Reality is that a lot of people want something for nothing. We've been trained very well to look for this and some are excellent at it. Take for example those who have a reocurring EI claims after they've gotten enough weeks to file a claim = something for nothing. Perceptions of tax breaks for the rich, companies with parent companies based off shore, all to avoid taxes, again = something for nothing. Whether we abuse a system or not, we all see it. Take that and translate it to municipal government, we want the brightest and best to manage the city but scoff at the idea of paying for it. We want to put our as much garbage as we want, not having to recycle or if we do, you better damn well pick it up at the curb! We want streets smooth as a bottle depsite climate and soild conditions and we want every sidewalk clean as a whistle the moment the last snow flake hits the ground but again, we don't want to pay for it.
ReplyDeleteRealistic expectations are the way to start. How do you get there? Demanding transparency!
In my opinion, there are a lot of things the City does right but often local media prefer to criticize rather than seek the full answer. The City should take an active PR role to explain why certain decisions are made, explain the rationale behind the route taken. If Managers recommend $5 mil to roads and council approves $3 mil then we should demand the Managers employed by the taxpayer explain the result of the decision to the taxpayers. How else are we to judge our politicians? Perhaps we will agree with the decision, perhaps not but how can we make that decision without the full picture?
I concur. One of the biggest problems of this city and it's province is it's negativity. We've been put down so long by other communities within the province and other provinces in our own country, and instead of turning that around and taking a "We'll show you" attitude, we've used the good ol' 'Maritime' expression "Whattya gonna do?" Well I'll tell you what I and, (unfortunately until now, mostly silent) others would like to do is start to give ourselves a pat on the back since no-one else is going to do it. What an incredible heritage we have here and what amazing personalities! America used to boast of being a 'melting pot' of cultures, etc? Well, here comes SJ! We need a good slogan along the same lines as "Yes, we can" and "We believe" Something we can flaunt shamelessly when the first cruise ships from Disney dock HERE in Saint John, NB! Man, I love this town!!!
ReplyDelete