CollingwoodToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected] or via our website. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letters were submitted in response to the current budget deliberations by Collingwood council. You can read about them here.
Town votes to hire a new forestry manager at a cost of $260,000!
It was announced that the latest draft budget will result in a 4.5% tax hike. Will it ever stop? Taxpayers are not an endless source of revenue for the town to waste.
Our town is out of control when it comes to employees. Currently, we have too many high-paid department heads and not enough actual workers.
This town is a perfect example of trying to be everything to everybody, i.e. low-income housing (will never happen), transit system (a complete waste of money), heritage district (who cares), grain terminals (a joke), new hospital, water plant expansion.
By design, municipal governments are doomed to failure because they can't "see the forest for the trees" and concentrate on what's important.
Paul Colangelo
Collingwood, Ont.
*****
I am absolutely appalled at reading the budget that our council is entertaining for 2024.
There are so many things in this budget that need to be cut, it's unbelievable.
They are asking for over a four-per-cent increase at a time when most households are absolutely maxed out, and they expect more?
These people need to get real. There are absolute need lists and then there are the fantasy lists that this council comes up with every year. Where exactly are people supposed to come up with another four-plus per cent?
Most people aren't getting a four-per-cent raise, in fact, most people are lucky to still have jobs.
The budget states salary increases are $160,000. Our town employees already make fantastic wages ... Perhaps they can go without a raise this time.
A business analyst I have no clue what this title even means, and is it really worth 98,000 a year, or is this just another make-up-a-job title that our town seems to be famous for?
A part-time administrative assistant for $50,000 a year. Wow! I know a lot of part-time jobs that only pay half that. Why are we paying that much for a person to only work a few hours a day?
New website $128,500, are we taking a page from Trudeau? There is no way a website costs that much to develop and what's wrong with the website we have now?
Climate change specialist: again, wow. We are being blasted daily about climate change from every single so-called specialist on earth. Do we really need to pay someone to tell us what we already know?
A new fire inspector for $44,000. Don't we already have a fire inspector? Do we need another?
A business accelerator for $120,000. Are we supposed to just accept that it costs that much money?
A new engineer. Now our esteemed mayor and CAO seem to think this is a necessity at $85,000 to $105,000 bucks, but in reality, we already have engineers on staff. They might think we need one but I highly doubt it's as urgent as they say.
They need to go back to the drawing board before they even think about passing this budget.
That 4.5-per-cent increase could well be the breaking point for some.
Perhaps it's time they deal with necessities only and forget the fantasy lists!
Glenna Kennedy
Collingwood, Ont.
.png;w=120;h=80;mode=crop)
