Skip to content

LETTER: White Rock’s finances not in order

Editor:
29976624_web1_Letter-to-editor-PAN

Editor:

Re: White Rock finances sound, 2021 statement indicates, Aug. 11

I read with amusement Alex Browne’s article proclaiming the City of White Rock is on sound financial footing.

The Statement of Financial Information in itself does not provide a comprehensive picture as to what the City of White Rock has been doing to cut costs, save taxpayers money and hold the line on tax increases by making sound business cases for all expenditure decisions.

For instance, this year’s tax increase was the highest increase in 40 years, particularly as a result of this current council’s inability to control spending and do a deep analysis of where the taxpayers’ money is being squandered.

According to the annual reports, since taking office this council has increased staff from 146 employees to 225 employees without any attempt to throttle back on hiring.

Another example is the many hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent on consultants.

In that same SOFI report that Mr.Browne based his story on, there is one item where B.F Binnie and Associates Ltd. were paid $533,867.

There were no questions forthcoming from council on any aspects of any of the expenditures in the SOFI, both for staff and vendors. There are many more examples.

For example, the mayor was pontificating at the July 25 council meeting,on how the City has won “The Distinguished Budget Presentation Award from the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada,” but that went only so far as producing 178 pages of colour photographs, charts and graphs and short summaries which they admitted in council chambers that they had not read, even after repeated pleas from staff to do so.

Another $60,000 wasted on a report that they did not use, one that was again prepared by a consultant.

Consequently, for four years in a row they were unable to roll their shirt sleeves up and do a deep dive into City expenses as they had promised to do in their 2018 campaign literature.

There was never any serious effort to do so. Not one zero-based budget was attempted even after staff gave them the option this year well in advance.

The amount of money they are throwing around is staggering. Too many examples to quote here although PAN readers have been treated to a cornucopia of examples, such as the fiasco of the Marine Drive West Lane Closure which wasted $305,000 of taxpayers’ money.

How much more of this can we take?

Garry Wolgemuth, White Rock