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jamesqI was chairing the monthly local SCA business meeting last week when we got sidetracked to unrelated topics. The term herding cats was probably invented by an SCA Seneschal somewhere. I'm blessed by the fact that my cats generally all go vaguely in the same direction most of the time.
The topic that deflected us? The recent Calgary civic budget. There were a few terse comments and the beginnings of an argument. I dragged us back to our business meeting because the civic budget wasn't something an SCA meeting was going to solve.
Plus, I really really wanted to refute some of the points I heard. It's a character flaw that I want to correct people who are wrong, even when I have zero chance of doing so. I'm better now, but I really should be in a support group for people who try to correct other people on the Internet.
Having grown older and (some say) wiser, I also recognize that it's often not "right and wrong" or "correct and incorrect", it's different philosophies. Like socialism vs. capitalism - defining which one is right is often a matter of what your goals are and how you measure success.
Anyway, at the time of our distraction, the city was in the midst of a budgetary crisis and was trying to find a way out of it. Here's the basics:
Now people hear 25% tax increase, and they think their total taxes are going up that much - a crippling amount. But what's actually going up is the city's property tax. For example, I pay on the order of $200/month in property taxes (it's actually a little less then that, but this makes the math examples easier). With a tax increase of 25% I'd be paying about $50 more.
But remember, the assessed value of my home is less now, so that would claw some of it back. Probably not all of it though because of inflation.
So I'm probably paying - at most - another $50 a month. No question, I'd rather have that money in my pocket so I could blow it on ale and whores, but not having it isn't going to break the bank either. For the record times are tough for me, but that's due to me making bad decisions about my family, rather then anything external. Also, I am digging my way out of it. But I digress.
The civic government was facing a huge backlash because of this proposed tax increase. Therefore, they were looking for ways to cut costs and were engaging in a well-publicized line-by-line examination of the city budget.
Now remember, the biggest expense the city has is salaries. If you want to cut costs fast, the easiest way to do that is pay cuts or layoffs. Powerful unions would cripple the city if either was tried. Agree or disagree with the concept of unions all you like, they exist and will behave the way they will whether you like them or not.
That pretty much leaves paper cutting the budget to death. Things like using one-ply toilet paper instead of two-ply because when you multiply that over 10000 city employees for 12 months, you can save a few thousand dollars. This sort of thing doesn't really work that well - it's penny-wise, pound-foolish. For example, if you fire several computer programmers because they're too expensive, then you have to rehire them later as consultants because the job they were doing still needs to be done, then you're worse off then you started. If you pay more overtime on a smaller staff, your going to loss money over sufficient staff to get the job done without overtime.
This came to a head for me when I heard fellow SCAdians discussing it during our meeting. One commented that the city was wasting "his" money on a gymnasium for city hall employees that would cost $1.3M (ultimately this made the cut). It suggested that he'd object to any so-called luxury for a city employee.
Did he really think like that? I dunno, maybe it was momentary frustration combined with a lack of in-depth knowledge on the subject. Maybe he thought "I don't have a gym at work, why should they?"
Bottom line is that people who work for the government are exactly the same as everyone else - they'd like to have a well-paid job with good benefits. But this fellow's attitude suggested that government employees didn't deserve the same benefits that normal people due. Because they're in the government they're worth less. If you want to retain good workers, you have to compensate them in a way that keeps them from getting another job. If you pay shit wages, you're going to get shit workers, and everything they touch will turn to shit too.
You might not like government, but since you're stuck with one, it might as well be a competent one right? I remember a (possibly apocryphal) story about the governor of Alabama a few years back. They had a plebiscite on raising state taxes to pay for much needed improvements. It failed, because Alabamans didn't want their taxes going up. The Governor said (paraphrasing) "I'm tired of my state being first in all things that are bad and last in all things that are good."
In short, you get the government you pay for.
Full disclosure here: Both my parents were (until they retired) federal civil servants working on CFB Calgary. I'm well aware of how hard civil servants work and how important their unions are.
Aside: I'm not knee-jerk for unions either (I fully disagreed with a city transit strike ten-years back because their reasons for striking were petty and small-minded) - Like any bureaucracy they need frequent pruning to prevent them from changing their purpose from why they exist to perpetuating their own bureaucracy.
Anyway, this was a long preamble to me explaining why I'm not too worked up about a tax increase of this order. I did the math, examined the situation and concluded that it wasn't that bad. The city provides a lot of services that I approve of and I'm willing to shell out for them. A lot of people I know agree with me. But not everyone, in fact, we're probably a minority, especially in Alberta.
The topic that deflected us? The recent Calgary civic budget. There were a few terse comments and the beginnings of an argument. I dragged us back to our business meeting because the civic budget wasn't something an SCA meeting was going to solve.
Plus, I really really wanted to refute some of the points I heard. It's a character flaw that I want to correct people who are wrong, even when I have zero chance of doing so. I'm better now, but I really should be in a support group for people who try to correct other people on the Internet.
Having grown older and (some say) wiser, I also recognize that it's often not "right and wrong" or "correct and incorrect", it's different philosophies. Like socialism vs. capitalism - defining which one is right is often a matter of what your goals are and how you measure success.
Anyway, at the time of our distraction, the city was in the midst of a budgetary crisis and was trying to find a way out of it. Here's the basics:
- The city get's it's money primarily through property taxes.
- Property taxes in this city are based on the property value. In the past, Calgary's hot housing market kept these funds rising.
- The city needs to spend money. This is mostly salaries and infrastructure maintenance, but also includes some construction. Generally, these costs are fixed, though they do crawl up due to inflation.
- The recession has clobbered the city's tax base and they need to make up a huge shortfall.
Now people hear 25% tax increase, and they think their total taxes are going up that much - a crippling amount. But what's actually going up is the city's property tax. For example, I pay on the order of $200/month in property taxes (it's actually a little less then that, but this makes the math examples easier). With a tax increase of 25% I'd be paying about $50 more.
But remember, the assessed value of my home is less now, so that would claw some of it back. Probably not all of it though because of inflation.
So I'm probably paying - at most - another $50 a month. No question, I'd rather have that money in my pocket so I could blow it on ale and whores, but not having it isn't going to break the bank either. For the record times are tough for me, but that's due to me making bad decisions about my family, rather then anything external. Also, I am digging my way out of it. But I digress.
The civic government was facing a huge backlash because of this proposed tax increase. Therefore, they were looking for ways to cut costs and were engaging in a well-publicized line-by-line examination of the city budget.
Now remember, the biggest expense the city has is salaries. If you want to cut costs fast, the easiest way to do that is pay cuts or layoffs. Powerful unions would cripple the city if either was tried. Agree or disagree with the concept of unions all you like, they exist and will behave the way they will whether you like them or not.
That pretty much leaves paper cutting the budget to death. Things like using one-ply toilet paper instead of two-ply because when you multiply that over 10000 city employees for 12 months, you can save a few thousand dollars. This sort of thing doesn't really work that well - it's penny-wise, pound-foolish. For example, if you fire several computer programmers because they're too expensive, then you have to rehire them later as consultants because the job they were doing still needs to be done, then you're worse off then you started. If you pay more overtime on a smaller staff, your going to loss money over sufficient staff to get the job done without overtime.
This came to a head for me when I heard fellow SCAdians discussing it during our meeting. One commented that the city was wasting "his" money on a gymnasium for city hall employees that would cost $1.3M (ultimately this made the cut). It suggested that he'd object to any so-called luxury for a city employee.
Did he really think like that? I dunno, maybe it was momentary frustration combined with a lack of in-depth knowledge on the subject. Maybe he thought "I don't have a gym at work, why should they?"
Bottom line is that people who work for the government are exactly the same as everyone else - they'd like to have a well-paid job with good benefits. But this fellow's attitude suggested that government employees didn't deserve the same benefits that normal people due. Because they're in the government they're worth less. If you want to retain good workers, you have to compensate them in a way that keeps them from getting another job. If you pay shit wages, you're going to get shit workers, and everything they touch will turn to shit too.
You might not like government, but since you're stuck with one, it might as well be a competent one right? I remember a (possibly apocryphal) story about the governor of Alabama a few years back. They had a plebiscite on raising state taxes to pay for much needed improvements. It failed, because Alabamans didn't want their taxes going up. The Governor said (paraphrasing) "I'm tired of my state being first in all things that are bad and last in all things that are good."
In short, you get the government you pay for.
Full disclosure here: Both my parents were (until they retired) federal civil servants working on CFB Calgary. I'm well aware of how hard civil servants work and how important their unions are.
Aside: I'm not knee-jerk for unions either (I fully disagreed with a city transit strike ten-years back because their reasons for striking were petty and small-minded) - Like any bureaucracy they need frequent pruning to prevent them from changing their purpose from why they exist to perpetuating their own bureaucracy.
Anyway, this was a long preamble to me explaining why I'm not too worked up about a tax increase of this order. I did the math, examined the situation and concluded that it wasn't that bad. The city provides a lot of services that I approve of and I'm willing to shell out for them. A lot of people I know agree with me. But not everyone, in fact, we're probably a minority, especially in Alberta.
