It was pleasing to hear the noise coming from our local council chambers that our councillors appear to be prepared to focus some much needed attention toward reducing our city's debt load.
With a bill that now exceeds $37 million, it was becoming obvious that pure growth wasn't going to cover the rapidly rising costs of providing civic services.
An original attitude that rising costs would be covered by future improvements in property tax revenues, development fees and sundry other rising fees, had to be re-thought as the debt load just kept rising with no end in sight.
With a little stabilization now entering the mix, and with our 13,000 residents receiving most of the services they have been demanding, it's time for our council and administration to get down to the not-so-popular task of paying for what we already have while not promising a whole lot in the immediate future.
Paying down debt while not sliding into a deficit position with this year's budget doesn't sound exciting, but we believe that this current council has gathered enough goodwill within the community to enable them to tackle the tough love stuff now.
It's a case of either doing it now, facing the financial music and paying the piper, or doing what the federal and provincial governments are doing, and kicking the debt can further down the road for the next generation of politicians to worry about.
The demand to accommodate boom-like growth for the past six years took precedence at City Hall, and we can't place the blame at anyone's feet for that. In fact, growth was what we wanted, and we got it. But growth costs money and rapid growth costs even more, we discovered.
There is no need to retract or reduce current programs or budgets, but local organizations and agencies will have to be made aware of the fact that they can no longer expect a natural two to five per cent increase in their annual funding support packages from the City. They'll have to learn to not only bite their tongues, but also bite the bullet for a year or two. Additional funding will have to be found somewhere other than City Hall. That $37 million needs to be trimmed quickly or else taxpayers will be seeing the bulk of their contributions just being directed toward servicing the loans and not going toward the repair of potholes or purchases of new fire trucks and police cruisers or pest control and clean water.
We don't want or need to be placed in a financial hole once the economic boom and boomlets settle into a more comfortable steady and manageable growth pattern. That will certainly be the case if we don't take advantage of the boom's monetary benefits, to pay down the debt that was accrued to accommodate this growth.
The new money, along with the traditional cash flow is now rolling into City coffers. It needs to be used prudently.
