Nuts? You don't say!

If it wasn't for the fact that city council is playing with $2.2 BILLION of tax dollars they would almost be laughable.

What a sweet job it must be to run a city. If you run out of money or just want more, you pass a budget that raises taxes. And the suckers that pass for citizens just pay it. If you ever run into a situation where you have more money that you need you just create some new way to spend it.

The largest line item in the 2010 budget is salaries and benefits. If you wanted to cut costs that would be a logical place to do it. But no... council votes 12-8 to keep the status quo and everybody is happy except a few hundred thousand taxpayers. But who cares about them? Right?

Even if you flat-lined the salaries of all city employees, including unionized ones (which will never happen in my lifetime), the costs will still go up because, low and behold, the 2010 budget states that the number of Full-time equivalents will raise from 13,966.65 to 1 4,122.86 from 2009 to 2010. Since 2008 the number of FTEs has gone up by 380.71.

Can you say dumb???

The spiral continues

There is a debate broiling in the City of Ottawa over ice time at indoor rinks.  The debate is not new... in fact it has been around for years.  On one side are the kids who want to play hockey and, since they go to bed at 9 PM, they want to play in the prime time period 4-9 PM on weekdays.  On the other hand there is every other group who also plays hockey.  I want to focus on Old-timers.

Old-timers are defined, generally, as players over 50.  I played with an Old-timers team that toured Australia a bunch of years ago, and the average age was 62.  These are old folks.  Not the ones sent to the homes by their loving families but the ones the families calls colourful.


Old-timers pay full rate for ice time in prime time.  Kids do not.  The city's solution to the problem of not enough ice rinks is to raise the cost of the prime ice time to the seniors to encourage them to move to non-prime time, defined, apparently, as every second Tuesday when the moon is in full view of the tower at the airport.

See the problem being created here?  If you drive full rate clients out of prime time in favour of those clients who do not pay full rate, you lose revenue.  When you lose revenue you have to raise rates.  When you raise rates you are no better off than when you started because the rug rats can't afford the higher rates and the old-timers on fixed incomes are playing at 4 AM for the same price that they used to pay for prime time.

The proposed solution is no solution at all.  It is a problem.  The real solution is more ice space.