But the missing part of the question: In order to open 8:15am -5pm, would they need to hire additional staff to do so (and thus, what would be the incremental change in taxes to allow for that window of service)?
With "bankers hours" of old, the staff worked a full day, but needed that hour (or so) in the morning and the few hours at the end of the day to process the work without the distraction/interruption of fresh counter work.
I always believe that government and businesses should do their best to be available for their "customers." But I know a lot of people here are concerned about costs/taxes - so some of the "yes" votes might change if it meant a noticeable tax increase.
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Wife???
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But to do that (to have more money to put away), they would have had to increase the taxes. The only other option is to cut other expenditures, and they were already cutting things left right and centre to try to keep the rate managable (and it was a pretty large increase in spite of this).
So, they gambled that we would have a low-snow year, and . . . . .
You run into the same issues with fire-fighting, policing, etc. You can hope that there will be less demand for the services (to balance the budget) but if life turns out differently . . . .
Municipal budgeting is challenging. I only did budgets for a hospital (that was challenging too, but far-easier than a city/town. Less "moving pieces", and primarily only one funding source and well-defined cost issues for most thing).
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. . . and the one other bridge, invariably when one is in a hurry, has traffic backed up/halted by railroad usage.
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Curious, are you a managerial accountant or an experienced capital project manager?
One of the top sources of failed projects is not having the right people quantify and track the financial aspects of projects. Considering the city has projects that add up to millions, they could easily recover this person's salary by avoiding preventable complications (including financially ill-defined project initiations).
Of course, if the person doesn't provide this "value-add", it will definitely be a waste of taxpayer money.
(speaking as both an accountant and project manager, of 30+ years. And yes, I have seen things go south in organizations because they didn't have such resources in place).
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Interesting -- in some other provinces, it would be a complete forfeiture of the vehicle (and a much larger fine).
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Federally, yes. -- so federally regulated employers recognize it
But not all provinces recognize it (in terms of holiday pay, business closures, etc., that is). Ontario doesn't treat it as an official holiday
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Realize that there's a significant probability that the reason they reduced hours was to keep labour costs in check (and thus taxes). Increasing hours might mean they have to hire more counter staff = increased taxes next year.
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This article needs the most important quote from Bill Blair -- that the demonstration squadron would continue, but (perhaps) with NEWER (safer) planes.
Of course, that would be a massive change to, well, everything -- as all the aerobatics would need to be "re-choreographed" to match the dynamics of newer aircraft, and then CAE/etc. would have to reprogram the simulators, etc. etc etc.
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Large computer server farms like this have two critical aspects -- one identified in the article (humongous electrical power consumption). But the other wasn't mentioned at all: considerable noise pollution (from all of the cooling systems). Over the past few years, several communities in the USA opened such facilities, to negative impacts to residents near-by (sleep impacts, wildlife impacts, human mental states, etc.).. I don't say this to speak against the project -- frankly, Canada needs this type of facilities ASAP (we really only have one super computer facility, in the GTA, and it's ranked at about #200 in the world these days (was something like #50 when built 3-4 years earlier)).
But given the problem of the noise, we should understand Carpere's plans to manage it -- and if good solutions can be worked out, we would be industry leaders.
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