Does the Mayor have a crystal ball or is this budget process just crass politics?

Long time residents will recall that it has been years and years since we last had a 0% tax increase from the Town of Newmarket.  If my memory is correct, the last time we got a 0% tax increase was back when Ray Twinney was Mayor.

Now we just seem to take it for granted that we are going to get hit in our pocket book each year while the size of our local government and the amount of Newmarket Town Hall spending waste continues to circle the proverbial bowl. 

This year, we were treated to a double whammy.  Just months after passing a massive tax increase on the town's portion of your property tax bill, we got hit a second time with a "special" levy to boost reserve funds that were wasted on things like the Magna Centre lawsuit which Newmarket lost, appealed, and lost again.

Note to voters - it doesn't take much to rack up massive legal bills with Van Bynen at the helm). 

So what is a Mayor who is likely facing his stiffest electoral challenge yet to do about his record as a tax spend ne'er-do-well supposed to do about his re-election bid? 

Will he own up to voters that he has a master plan to keep on raising taxes and grow government expenses and debt for as long as we'll let him? 

Nope

Instead he is hard at work hoping to sneak through a tax increase right now ahead of 2014 so he won't have to talk budget at all while campaigning.

What is the problem with passing a budget in 2013 that is expected to see us through until 2015?

1) it is sneaky and a decision solely motivated by politics.  I'm sorry but that isn't good leadership and certainly lacks a willingness by the Mayor to run on his own record

2) unless he has a crystal ball and can anticipate potential riskslike a higher than expected snow fall, or maybe a storm that causes extensive flooding (after all, Newmarket is located on a floodplain), he is bound to make errors when forecasting town expenses.  He will either have to be conservative and charge us much higher taxes to pad the books a bit just in case, or he will take the risk of running out of the money we need to plow roads and maintain our streets. 

3) remember this same Mayor had to increase property taxes a second time just a few weeks ater passing the 2013 budget.  We can't have a whole lot of faith in Van Bynen's abilties to forecast. Any error in his judgement and he will be handcuffing the eventual winner of the 2014 Mayoralty race to manage with greater debts and/or depleted reserves.  In other words, the Van Bynen legacy could carry on past 2014 even if he is turfed from office as many expect.   

The Town of Newmarket is blasting Twitter and other advertising asking for citizens' feedback about budget 2014.  The response from the public should be simple:  Leave the politics out of it and lets focus on good sound management of the municipality.  To do that requires that the 2014 budget should be considered in 2014 and not during the summer of 2013.