Before the meat of Wednesday's municipal budget meeting was carved into, a concerned local citizen gave council a taste of her fury.
Francine Allaby came to city hall and asked Mayor Steve Black if she could present. It required consensus from the rest of council, which they granted, although Councillor Pat Bamford felt it was a tad unorthodox.
"In the past we've often had one meeting where the public has made presentations. I can't recall if we've had that," he said.
"We did," replied Black quickly.
"Okay so, I don't want to set a precedent that people just show up and . . . " said Bamford.
"We just set it," chuckled Black.
Allaby then came forward into the speaker's chair and thanked council for allowing her the opportunity.
"I'll be short and sweet," she said, and then read from a prepared statement.
She said council has 'no business case' for spending money on items such as:
- Donations to 'for profit' groups, such as the Snowcross event
- The proposed new aquatic centre
- The new fire hall on the campus of Northern College
- The 8-day fireworks festival known as 'Stars and Thunder'
Allaby said in other industries a business case must be made to justify major expenditures. She has little faith that the 'Stars and Thunder' festival will have any economic benefit to the city.
"We will be lucky to break even with this eight-day fireworks festival. Most likely we are going to lose money, because there will be other items and expenses that will be added," she said.
"Sure it might bring in some tourists, but your average taxpayers are not the ones who are going to benefit from this concert series. Restaurants, hotels, they might benefit, but the people who are struggling to stay in their homes because of the rising cost of electricity, food, and taxes, will not be the ones who are benefiting from this. It might be easier for us to accept this spending if it looked like you were interested in finding cost savings," said Allaby.
Regarding the state of the city's budget Allaby pulled no punches.
Allaby stayed and watched the remainder of the budget meeting with a small band of cohorts. Andrew Autio for TimminsToday "The idea of using reserves to lower the increase in tax rate is absolutely insane. Sorry, but there is no other word. This is not what reserves are for. Our reserves are already low. It is time for this council to start making some hard decisions, and find savings."
She lamented the fact that all city departments were previously instructed to come to the table with a two percent overall reduction in their budgets for 2017 but has seen little evidence of cost saving efforts.
"If those department heads cannot find savings, then that is their problem and they need to go back to the drawing board. Other companies, businesses, and municipalities are doing this. We are not that unique in that we cannot find any savings," said Allaby.
She also took great offense to the treatment of Timmins Fire Chief Mike Pintar during Monday's council debate on the new fire hall at Northern College.
"There are many people who watched Monday's council meeting and are appalled at the way that our Fire Chief was treated. He was asked for his informed opinion, and then was treated very disrespectfully. There should be an apology put in place," she read, and then quickly left the speaker's chair.
Mayor Black then thanked her for her commentary, and opened the floor up for councillor input.
"Francine, thank you for the presentation. You raise a lot of interesting and, things we should be thinking about, and trust that we will take it seriously," said Councillor Rick Dubeau, who was the sole councillor to respond directly to Allaby.
