Comment 116969

By CharlesBall (registered) | Posted March 11, 2016 at 09:46:27

Has anyone looked at their hydro bill lately. It is indecipherable; filled with levies and debt repayment charges and credits and it is up 15% year over year which is literally scandalous.

Over 25% of our budget is policing which is 95% salaries and pensions and benefits. Labour costs make up the vast majority of our budget.

Levies that pit one area against another or one line item against another are fractious and feed the ability of government to hide the hard issues facing us. The city's infrastructure expenses, even with the deficit, are a pittance compared to the main issues facing us which are that we cannot afford to hire the people we hire at the rate we hire them for the work they do. We are not getting value for our money.

Let me put it another way. If we could get a hold of the monster that really exists, we could have free bus service in Hamilton and nobody would notice it on their tax bills whether they lived in Flamborough or downtown.

I have said before that my taxes have quadrupled in 20 years. We pay about the highest municipal taxes in the whole wide world. The city says "Look, we kept the increase to under 2%, but the increases have been over and over and compounded. No one talks about the compounding. This cannot continue.

We have potholes not because we do not have the money to fix it. It's because we have chosen to spend our money in an ineffective way.

Raise the Hammer should become an advocate for fiscal responsibility. You have to attack the big items. Farting around with transit levies is small potatoes. We are way beyond being over-charged and under serviced.

Comment edited by CharlesBall on 2016-03-11 09:51:14

No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be? George Orwell

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