Budget breathing room for taxpayers

By a vote of 8-1 (with the lone dissenter being the usual opponent), Council gave the first three readings to a series of budget bylaws last night. Here are the notes for the speech I delivered in support of the 2014 budget.

I will oppose this budget. Actually, let me change the tensing of that sentence. I would oppose this budget:

• If it didn’t continue lowering the average tax-rate increase.
• If it didn’t continue lowering the residential tax-rate increase.
• If it didn’t continue the one-point tax shift that makes commercial tax-rate increases even lower.
• If it didn’t provide for major new public-safety initiatives.
• If it didn’t respond to taxpayers’ requests for transportation improvements
• And if it didn’t carry with it a major commitment to continually examine city services, to see what should be added and – significantly – what should be stopped.

And so, what does Budget 2014 deliver?

Spirit Square, Coquitlam (Photo by Terry O'Neill)

First, and importantly, it calls for an average tax rate increase of 2.42% -- almost a full half-a-point lower than last year’s increase, which was lower than the year before’s, and which in turn was lower than the year before that. Indeed, since the high-water mark of an average 7.11% increase in 2009, the average tax-rate increase has been on a straight line down. And that’s good.

Hand-in-hand with that, both the residential rate and the commercial rate increases are lower as well, compared to last year. And, because of our continuing commitment to a one-point tax shift, the commercial rate increase will be only 1.8%. This is good news too.

And what about those public-safety initiatives? Four new firefighters and two new RCMP officers represent a pretty major commitment, and so I think we’ve met that standard.

As for transportation improvements, which our annual Ipsos Reid survey continues to ranks very high our citizens’ wish list, this budget commits significant funds to road rehabilitation and road enhancement in every part of Coquitlam.

And what about future decisions? I was very pleased when I heard, as part of our budget deliberations, that our management team was launching a new initiative to identify services and programs that are no longer needed, with the aim of eliminating them….. thus allowing the property-tax-payer to keep a few more dollars in his or her pocketbook or for the city to add new services. The initiative is called the Stop-Doing List, and if there’s one initiative that should never be put on that list, it’s the Stop-Doing List itself!

And so: I had six criteria for the budget, and all six were met.

This doesn’t mean the budget is perfect, from my point of view. The record of our lengthy deliberations shows that I opposed some spending measures that the majority approved. But while the budget is not perfect, it is certainly good enough. And it’s even better when you factor in the major decrease in utilities fees which the mayor mentioned. In fact, it means the average homeowner will pay only $15 more on his or her combined property-tax/utilities bill this coming year. 

But on the strength of its diminishing tax-rate increase alone, a rate which gives us the second-lowest tax increase in more than two decades (the lowest, in 2005, being 2.27%) it is definitely good enough. On the single issue of tax increases -- the one everyone watches, the one that makes the headlines --  it’s certainly better than the budget of 1994 (4.8% average increase), '95 (4.8%), '96 (3.45%), '97 (5.36%), '98 (4.5%), '99 (4.5%), 2000 (5.78%), 2001 (4.9%), 2002 (2.77%), 2003 (4.1%) and, well, you get the picture.

If there is any hesitation among my colleagues over whether to support this budget, let me suggest: Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. --meaning that insisting on perfection often results in no improvement at all. If a majority of us voted against this budget, not only would all the hard work we’ve done be put in jeopardy, but the landmark low levels of tax-rate-rise that we’ve achieved might also be threatened.

There’s also something called “the Pareto Principle” or 80–20 rule, which observes that it commonly takes 20% of your effort to complete 80% of a task, while to complete the last 20% of a task—that part of it which it takes to achieve a perfect outcome-- takes 80% of the effort. Considering this, along with the fact that achieving absolute perfection is impossible, leads us to the law of diminishing returns, in which it becomes clear that the closer one gets to achieving perfection, the increasingly inefficient your work becomes.

And so, what does it mean for the budget tonight? As I said before, it’s a good one, but not perfect. But, remember, not only is achieving “perfection” is impossible, but the longer we work trying to achieve perfect, the harder and more inefficient that work becomes, and the greater the chance that we’ll become stalled and achieve nothing at all.

Something is certainly better than nothing.

And this something – this budget which answers the needs of so many of our citizens, from the hopeful new homeowners on Burke Mountain to the actively involved seniors at Dogwood Pavilion, from the commuter looking for better roads to the merchant looking for a lighter tax load – is certainly something worth supporting.