I am sharing with readers a letter received from a Cambridge resident addressed to the Mayor and Council. The individual requested to remain anonymous but ok’d the reprinting of the message. It talks in part about the City’s threat of “reduced services” if taxes are cut or held at inflation. This is a scare tactic. Services won’t be cut if the City improves its efficiency and effectiveness. Yet there seems to be no interest in doing this. And this is exactly where the problem lies. We are getting 20 cents back in value on every dollar we spend in property taxes!!!!
John Waylett
Dear Cambridge Mayor and Councillors,
I completed the Cambridge ‘2025 Budget Survey’ this week. I must say that the structure of the survey is most discouraging. The financial management approach of the mayor, council and budget department seems clearly one of MORE TAXES. A question in the Survey illustrates the mindset of the finance dept and council. Question #11 asks about choices for “setting annual tax rates”. The available choices include: 1. higher taxes but reduced service levels; 2. higher taxes with maintained service levels; 3. higher taxes with expanded services. It is astonishing that your leadership does not even consider the objective of delivering current service levels without tax increases, by improving operational efficiencies. This month I watched a city crew repair a buried water supply following its failure after a road restoration project. This repair was evidently required due to poor engineering or inadequate repairs execution – the water main failed the day after the road project completed. The repair procedure that followed included at least 8 city workers, where most of the work team stood watching the others that were actually working. ‘Service Level’ is NOT measured by the manhours expended or employees on staff. Effective ‘service level delivered’ must be based on the end result, not the $ spent. ‘Task execution with lower cost does not mean ‘Reduced Service’ as seemingly considered by City management. All private businesses are required to deliver more with less costs through improved efficiencies. The city should at least TRY to do this too. Charge all managers to find ways to deliver current service levels (not really that high) while reducing expended costs. On June 5, 2023 the City Council adopted the FY2024 Operating Budget, representing a budget increase of 10% over FY23. And Cambridge property taxes increased by another 7% for 2024. In recent years, City of Cambridge boasts one of the highest property tax increase records in Ontario. Your current projection for FY2025 suggests even higher spending and even higher tax increases. As residents, we can ill-afford increases of such significance. While you, as mayor, councilors, and city staff, can all look forward to pay raises to accommodate inflationary expense increases – we cannot. Your targets for budgets should NOT be measured by inflation reports. Our Cambridge tax increases are themselves, inflationary… a cause of inflation, not a result of it. Our family are long time Cambridge residents, seniors on a fixed income. We don’t get an annual ‘raise’ in income like you do! When you and our city management can’t be successful in containing costs, you seem happy to simply pass on your failures to residents. Our increased family costs for necessities such as property taxes, water taxes, etc. simply cause our family to reduce expenditures in other areas such as health care, food, entertainment, local donations, etc. Your objective should be a zero tax increase – NOT always asking for more money!
Anonymous
Leave a Reply