Budget Process or Christmas Wish List?

Remember when we were kids?  At Christmas time the teacher would hand out a sheet of paper and all the kids would write a letter to Santa.  All the letters were pretty much the same.  We'd feign interest about Mrs Claus and Rudolph.  We would assure Santa that we've been good over the course of the year and we would show our Christmas spirit by decorating the letter with hand drawn images of Christmas trees, candy canes and wreaths.  However, the real purpose behind the letter was to deliver the news to Santa Claus of our wish list for Christmas morning.

This Santa letter exercise was called to mind when I used the town of Newmarket's new "Budget Tool" (go to www.newmarket.ca).  This tool allows you enter in the assessed value of your home, and then slide targets back and forth to increase or decrease the amount you pay for specific items, such as road work, library services, and garbage pick up.  After you make your decision, the tool warns you that you may have reduced service levels (if you opt to pay less) or increased services (if you opt to pay more).  Perhaps unintentionally, the calculator is biased towards showing that drastically cutting services will only have a small financial reward to residents while increasing services will only cost each of us just a few dollars more each month.   

I would like to propose another way of reviewing the budget; it starts with the question, can we maintain our current level of service and yet, still reduce costs?  I am emphatic in the belief that this is possible.     

Let's refute the school of thought that economic austerity means immediate withdrawal of services.  Evidence shows otherwise, as the Government of Canada has just demonstrated.  Federally, it was possible to make $30 billion in expenditure cuts while experiencing no appreciable difference in the level of government services we receive on a day to day basis.  The federal government did this by finding greater efficiencies in their departments and laying off employees who became redundant.  Where programs had passed their best before expiry date, they were ceased.  Where head count was bloated, they were reduced.  Where spending was out of control, they were curtailed.  All in all, the majority of us felt no ill effects from these cuts. 

If the federal government can accomplish this feat, surely there is fat to be trimmed locally too.  Rather than ask citizens to draft up a Christmas list of services they would like to continue, perhaps a more fruitful exercise would be to ask Town of Newmarket department heads to demonstrate how they can maintain service levels while spending less and give bonuses and/or incentive pay to those managers who actually achieve their goals. 

My philosophy regarding salaries is simple.  I tend to ignore those who whinge about "Sunshine" lists.  If a department head has the ability through his management skills to save taxpayers seven figured sums, why do I care if we pay him/her a six figured salary and a significant bonus?  However, if the department head isn't able to demonstrate savings of tax payer money while retaining service levels, then his/her name should be on the top of the list of those to be laid off.  Just like anyone in the private sector, Sunshine list employees must be ready to show why they get paid the big bucks.