Courtesy of the Rush/the Wolf:
Another sparse crowd showed up for budget meeting number four in Williams Lake tonight.
No concrete decisions were made as councillors went through budget items line by line for much of the evening.
The slow pace of events sparked some criticism from resident Tom Hoffman: “I challenged them to become the leaders that we’ve elected them to be and to become more business focused. So I did use some examples where they’re looking at capital purchases and also hiring where they could very well explore opportunities of contractors and consultants and to start up new businesses.”
Hoffman added he's in favour of no new taxes or even a one percent reduction.
Council will meet for another budget meeting the end of this month. The budget must be adopted in May.
Although nothing is set in stone, council is considering a tax increase of 3%.
In addition - Greg Fry, of the Rush, tweeted the following from tonight's Budget Meeting:
1) Williams Lake resident Tom Hoffman criticizes council for lack of leadership during public component of tonight's budget meeting.
2) Hoffman says the City of Williams Lake is not business friendly....would like to see a zero % or even a minus 1 @ tax reduction in 2012.
With regard to Point #2 above - I respect the opinion of Tom Hoffman but practically speaking - I don't think the City can afford a tax rollback of 1% unless, like a 0% tax increase, City Staff lays out, in reality, what City Services/Budgets would have to be cut to achieve this and we haven't seen this yet, especially around the idea of Tax Shifting and it is crucial that this is done so a responsible decision can be made around budgets/taxation. Perhaps this is coming but my "gut instinct" tells me that residents' are likely to receive a 3% hike in their property taxation from this Council unless things change over the next 30-60 days as the deadline to finalize and approve this year's City Budget is coming up fast (May 15th)
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