Financial grade
To put Powell River city council’s mid-term report card [“City of Powell River council mid-term report card,” November 16] in context, and after a phone call to the Peak for clarification, the grading was that of the editorial staff and not a formal public/citizen survey.
That aside, a mandatory element was omitted from the report card: fiscal stewardship.
The following is information to help grade council on its financial management responsibilities. Data was obtained from financial statements of 2014, 2015 and the November 15 review provided to council by the city’s chief financial officer.
The current council started its mandate with a windfall of increased revenue. Tax revenue increased from $14.9 million in 2014 to $16 million in 2015 and a projected $16.3 in 2016; good news.
The bad news is that spending, total operating expenses, is budgeted to increase by $4.6 million since 2014.
The annual operating surplus (deficit) went from a $3.4 million surplus at the end of 2014 to a budgeted deficit of $2.6 million in 2016.
Total reserves went down from $17 million in 2014 to a budgeted $11.5 million in 2016.
Total city debt went up from $12.2 million in 2014 to a budgeted $16.5 million in 2016.
According to a December 2015 city financial plan open house, Powell River residential tax per capita has jumped to third highest in 30 communities surveyed by city staff.
Council’s mid-term grade for financial management would be a C-minus.
The decline in the city’s financial well-being is even more critical with the realization that the major industrial sector (Catalyst Paper Corporation), which accounts for 16.9 per cent of the city’s tax revenue, has not had a profitable year since coming out of bankruptcy protection and, as reported recently in the Peak, negotiations to purchase Catalyst have failed.
A rainy-day fund would be fiscally prudent, if not mandatory. It seems that politicians, regardless of level and stripes, find it impossible to save for that rainy day. Spend all you have and, in many cases, more than you have.
Paul McMahon
Invermere Court
History lesson
Thank you so much for the supplement you published [“Lest we forget,” November 9] that offered us biographies of those who we remember on November 11.
Each year as I listen to the list of names being read (just their last names and initials, no first names), I wonder who they were and what their story was. This year I learned.
It is also a lesson in history about how many men in this community worked at the mill in the 1940s, and how few worked elsewhere.
Susie Darke
Highway 101
Lesser evil
What David Brindle has done in his name-calling rant [“Viewpoint: Not our president,” November 16] is to display his utter contempt for those he disagrees with. Millions of American voters, for very good reasons, considered Donald Trump the lesser of two evils. They do not deserve that kind of disrespect.
Kathy Kiernan
Highway 101
