Coming off the heels of my first budget city council meeting, a motion was made today to increase our contribution to reserves (aka. savings account) of $3.5 million (approx 1.5% increase of taxes) to start the process of tackling our looming $350 million infrastructure deficit. That motion was rejected with some of the stated reasoning stated because ‘tax payers would revolt.’
Tax payers should be revolting already when they look at our deficit and no significant plan in place to tackle it. We are entering into the age-old practice of pretending deficits aren’t real debts and temporarily pleasing citizens with low taxes and patting ourselves on the back for ‘reducing debt.’ Eventually we are going to have to face reality and pay our debts. There are quite a few tools out there to support municipalities in accomplishing this, and I hope that we can come together soon to make that happen.