As a businessman watching the city's budget process, I must admit I find some of our councillors to be completely bewildering.
I can understand MacKay's motion to transfer the $4.18 million costs of the DARP realignment from the taxpayer to the developers. MacKay, whose skepticism about DARP is well known, attempted to transfer these costs to the developers because he knows that DARP cannot proceed without heavy subsidization from the taxpayer and if the load is shifted to the private sector, this non-syndical plan will be stymied.
I can understand Hughes' motion to reduce the overall budget by $300,000 and insist that services to the public not be cut to affect these savings. This is simply management by objectives, which is both practical and attainable. Any person who is familiar with budgeting in general and public budgets in particular knows that we could trim out $300,000 in waste from the $100 million budget without sacrificing public services.
In complete contrast, I am simply baffled by Prefontaine's comments. He is quoted in the Gazette as saying that he believes administration tries to act in the best interests of residents. Prefontaine is quoted by the Gazette as saying, “To bring forward a motion like this, [i.e. Hughes’ motion] unfortunately for me, just speaks to the fact that we don’t have that faith.” So what does Prefontaine consider his role as a councillor to be at budget time? It seems that he thinks his role is to sit there and rubber stamp the ever-escalating budget created by Draper and his staff. If that is his vision of a councillor’s role at budget time … should he not have told us that during the election campaign?
Gord Hennigar, St. Albert
