Rick Malboeuf wrote:
Mike Cluett made a good point Monday night which was not one member of council campaigned on the promise of ” Vote for me and the first thing I will do is raise your taxes 4.56% “. In order to get elected they all campaigned on controlling spending and on fiscal responsibility and then a mere 3 months after getting elected 6 of them conveniently forgot those promises they had made. Is it any wonder people have such a low opinion of politicians.
When I campaigned door to door and talked about financially responsibilities I did not feel that we'd be able to keep the budget from growing due to the financial headwinds and pressures facing us. I did not agree that we'd be able to keep our future budget realistically to the level of inflation for 2011. I thought making such a promise would have been irresponsible knowing then what financial pressures we were being faced with (Arts Centre, Sports Centre, hospital expansion, etc). I attended the budget consultation and open houses in 2010 and talked many times about the financial pressures and headwinds that we'd be faced with coming up immediately with the new council.
Rick Malboeuf wrote:
Health care falls under provincial jurisdiction, it is not the responibility of municipalities to fund health care services through property taxes, which are after tax dollars.
And then we wake up. Honestly, it's a nice dream, and it's actually 100% true. But in the real world we live in, hospitals don't get built unless municipalities contribute real dollars.
Rick Malboeuf wrote:
Council in my opinion made a very big mistake in approving this tax levy, it sends the wrong message to the province, by agreeing to tax home owners to pay for a health care service we have compromised our negociating position on health care funding, we blinked and I am afraid that we will pay dearly for that mistake.
. Members of the hospital board, halton healthcare services, CEO John Oliver, etc all said something different. Cindy Lunau, who sits on the healthcare services board also says something different. She specifically said it would *help* us in the future.