No wonder the City of Abbotsford is always claiming to have NO MONEY to invest in reducing poverty, homelessness, addiction and other pressing social issues. When you like to waste money in $60,000,000.00 chunks, you would tend to find yourself a little short of cash.
They will have lots of excuses, which they will call explanations or reasons, why Abbotsford paying $75 million when Langley is only paying $15 million does not mean Abbotsford is overpaying by $60,000,000.00. Although why they believe and expect taxpayers to believe paying $75 million for what someone else pays $15 million isn’t overpaying …
With just 25% of what they have chosen to overpay we could build the social housing facilities and fund programs to make serious inroads on poverty reduction, homelessness, addiction and affordable housing. Even a paltry (to City staff and council) 10% would fund innovative new approaches to addressing these stubborn issues. It would also provide funds to enable groups within the City to put together applications for monies available from more senior levels of government.
Funding is needed by these groups due to the fact it takes a great deal of paperwork to write up such applications – a very time consuming process when relying on volunteers. It seems that searching for and submitting grant applications is too much work for taxpayers to expect city staff and council to do so. Which may explains why senior city staff felt they deserved big salary bonuses for working during the strike they provoked last summer?
It does cause me to wonder how many thousands (hundreds of thousands, millions?) could be saved every year on the City’s yearly budget through responsible fiscal, grant and management practices? Such sound practices would appear too much work for city managers and council to bother doing in an effort to leave a few extra dollars in taxpayer’s pockets. Now if it were their own pockets …
When I consider how much good could be accomplished in 2007 with a fraction of the money City staff and council are in such a headlong rush to throw away, I am left wondering if I had better get my doctor to double or triple my prescribed antidepressants.