SMTTA

Community Input….sorta

I suppose that it is better than nothing. The Campbell River City Council has decided that they want input from the community, in their efforts to come up with a balanced budget for this year and next. They have put a survey online, in the paper and you can get a copy from City Hall. They have opened up the doors to the public, during the long days of work, to come in and say their piece about how they feel the budget should be spent and what the focuses should be. As I said, it is better than nothing, but it is pretty darn close to nothing as you can get.

Yes, there is plenty of information available. Yes, all of the available city services are available to comment on. Yes, the breakdown of where the money goes is there. There is even a peek at the long term financial plan. What is missing is the “frivolous spending” portion of the survey. Things that have absolutely no ROI for the community and are designed solely to make Council and small groups look good.

How much money is going to be spent on making Campbell River a serious “Communities in Bloom” contender? I have yet to hear a single industry say “sorry, but your community isn’t pretty enough for us to set up there”. How much are we going to spend on council junkets to various locations, this year? We will be sharing the costs of supporting the 2010 B.C. Seniors Games this year, but how much are we going to spend on the Council’s desire to make themselves look important? How much is going to be spent on the upkeep of the rooftop park that no one can access, or on the annual Council “retreat”. How much money is going to be spent on consultants that tell us the obvious, like a fire department review that essentially tells us to maintain and build our fire prevention services or the future Water Conservation Education consultant that will cost us a pretty penny to tell us information that we could just as easily get online from a thousand water and energy conservation sites. How much more money will we continue to spend on deciding what kind of lights we should have downtown, or the writing of redundant policies? Where is all that information and how can I bring up my concerns in 30-minute session that people are going to be lining up at, to voice their concerns?

The process of public input is something that should have happened a long time ago. Communications and public consultation is number 5 on the alphabetical list, but maybe it shouldn’t even be on the list. Maybe it should just be a given.

Unfortunately, with the timeframes given and the comments made by staff, this little exercise may have little or no effect on the budget decisions made by this council and its staff. They have proven, on many occasions, that our input and concerns don’t really matter.