posted February 09, 2008

INCREASED USER FEES AND THE CITY BUDGET: editorial by Jutta Mason.

The CELOS group (CEntre for LOcal Research into Public Space) has been tracking the Parks, Forestry and Recreation budget for some years. Last year we hired an economics researcher to find out the budget trends from before amalgamation to now -- no easy feat but not entirely impossible either. He wrote a paper that we published on the cellos.ca web site, and on Tuesday February 5, I made a deputation to the Budget Committee, drawing in part on that research.

CELOS has been trying to find out what has caused Parks, Forestry and Recreation (PF&R) to be so "cash-strapped." This year (for example) this department’s net tax funding will be around $235.5 million, and yet they say they need $84 million more (from user fees etc.).

Since payroll is the biggest expense by far, we looked there. Our budget researcher found an increase of 787 full-time-equivalent jobs over the last ten years. That's could certainly be one reason why the budget has gone up so steeply. But this year’s 2008 City Budget document says there was a PF&R "staffing growth" of only 186 in the ten years since amalgamation. So: what’s the real number? The general manager said our numbers are not right, even though our researcher used all the previous city budgets as his source. We asked her to show us our mistakes, but got no response. At the same time, the new budget request by Parks, Forestry and Recreation asked for another increase of 64 full-time-equivalent staff, bringing the total number of “full-time-equivalent” positions to 4186.

CELOS wanted to bring this piece of confusing information, and other omissions and contradictions, to the Budget Committee's attention in our deputation. We suggested that the councillors need to know more in order to make good decisions. However, for now the councillors seem to be uninterested in finding out more -- when my five minutes were up, they thanked me politely and returned to the Arts presentations.

But CELOS will continue to publish our research about budget details. By now we’ve learned quite a bit -- and what we’ve been unable to find is just as interesting. For example, the recent "Everybody gets to Play" user fee report often cites a program review which city manager Shirley Hoy also emphasized in her Budget address: the "review cost recovery model for recreation." The 2008 city budget lists this report as completed, but after three weeks of trying to get a copy, CELOS found out that it's being held for publishing until March. Yet the abolition of the Priority centres, and perhaps also the permit fees, are based on this unavailable report.

To find out more about the budget, go to www.celos.ca.

Read more in Dufferin's February Newsletter