At a special meeting of Cornwall City Council on Monday, May 15 Cornwall City Council passed a residential property tax increase of 1.74 percent.
There are those who say that no one likes paying taxes, but I do, as long as my tax dollars are being spent wisely.
What is not wise are the spending cuts that were required to achieve this low tax increase.
Councillor Carilyne Hébert put it best when she pointed out that this tax increase is even lower than last year’s despite the much rougher financial seas that the City is now facing.
What did we as a City have to sacrifice in this cut? How much blood did it draw out of our future prosperity?
In a closed meeting council decided to extract $480, 000 from wages and benefits of municipal employees; how exactly this money will be found has yet to be determined. My fear is that this decision will be detrimental to municipal services, and therefore will reduce the value of the tax dollars that we pay.
With less staff, hours or other resources that will be affected by this cut, the City’s ability to deliver service that we pay for will be compromised.
Additionally, how will this decision affect municipal managers? Assuming that this $480, 000 cut is only intended to affect non-unionized employees, will municipal managers have the resources necessary to negotiate with their unions come bargaining time?
Going into this budget season, as an observer, I knew that there would be cuts coming to avoid a large tax increase. As I stated before, if I pay taxes, I want that money spent properly by the City, so there is a place for financial review and budget cuts, but what was the goal here? Who decided that 1.74 percent was the ideal golden number that had to be reached?
Councillor Elaine MacDonald was in favour of a 2.78 percent increase, why was this not thought of as ideal?
The Mayor was in favor of the 2.78 percent increase over the 1.74 because he felt it would leave the City in a more stable financial position.
“I’m going to support 2.78 and why? Because that doesn’t even address the problems we have this year,” said Mayor O’Shaughnessy. “We’ve accomplished nothing to tackle this $3 million deficit. There’s no one who dislikes raising taxes more than me. Cutting for the sake of cutting makes it harder for future years. I can just see this compounding and it is just getting worse and worse. This is just an illusion to the people that we are saving them money, but we’re not.”
$3 million dollars, that is the deficit that the City is facing this year and it will be more next year, because council did not address it. Next year inflation and interest will drive that number up.
What sort of financial situation will the City of Cornwall be in from now and how deep will the scar of this year’s cut be?
