Some questions about the City of Nanaimo budget

At tonight's Budget Process e-Town Hall meeting an impressive 24 questions (my notes show) were asked and answered to varying degrees. Imagine if the event had been better promoted, i.e. on the City of Nanaimo homepage.

I was doubtful at first when the questions were about bicycle safety and dog parks. I question the relevancy of a number of other questions to the budget at hand. After spending some time this past weekend going through the budget proposal prepared by city staff, I came up with ten questions, one of which I asked at tonight's meeting.

1. In your budget survey, why is ‘somewhat important’ ranked higher than ‘important’ and why does only one category warrant the option of “I don’t care”?

2. Why is this budget meeting and the survey not promoted on the city of Nanaimo homepage?

3. If crime rates are decreasing according to the budget document, and the population of Nanaimo will only increase by about 5% in this budget period (according the Conference Board of Canada) , and inflation in BC is averaging 1.1% per year according to StatsCan why is spending on police services projected to increase by 26%? This includes 16 additional RCM and 3 additional support staff? A 5% population growth should mean 7 new members added to the current staffing of 140, not 16.

4.   Similarly,  what is the justification for increasing fire and emergency services by 29% between 2016 and 2020?

5. Under your key assumptions in the budget document (p.29), why do you cite British Columbia inflation for 2014 at 2.4%, when according to Statscan, in September 2015 it was 1.3%.

6. What is the status of contract negotiations between the City and the IAFF? Will wage increases be reigned in after the 2.5% retroactive increase given recently for 2012-2015.

7. What will be the effect on budget information presented of excluding library costs? Will these costs be shown as part of any expenditure or tax increases? 

8. Can you commit that no City of Nanaimo funds will be part of the grants for the $5.1 million Port Theatre expansion? If not, how much in city funding will be spent?

 9. How many firefighters are currently employed by the City?

10. Why does the city plan to change the nature of financing capital projects from drawing on reserves to debt financing? This makes no sense when the reserves are earning so little.