City Hall

I was going to write a letter to the editor at the Nanaimo Daily News today - happily, Philip Wolf wrote a column that pretty well said everything I wanted to say - and he said it very well.

Still, I feel a strong need to rant - so here it comes.

The bureaucrats at City Hall want to hire another accountant (the top 3 positions are already held by CAs) at a cost to the taxpayer of $150,000 (not counting benefits, new computers, support staff etc.) as an internal auditor!

Huh!?

Taxes are going up again for the umpteenth year in a row and they want to spend even more money on a position that is not going to benefit anyone expect perhaps the staff. The province recently announced that it had put a municipal auditor in place - so why do we need one? For an end run? Are the bureaucrats trying to tell me that someone paid by City Hall is going to "out" City Hall if it sees inefficiencies - maybe even surplus personnel? I don't think so. This is like the RCMP investigating its own staff.

Let's have a core review by an outside agency. Let's see where the taxpayer can save money rather than spend even more. Let's have an outside auditor look at the books.

But in all of this, here's one thing that totally blows me away: all but three council agreed to this new position! Come on, mayor and council! Think! Use your minds for a change. It often occurs to me that the only job of mayor and council is to look at proposals handed to it by city staff and nod and say, "Yes sir. A shiny new building for $16 Million? Of course - why should you have to work in a renovated one? More staff - staff that will protect your sorry asses? Of course. Here you go - it's only taxpayers' money after all."

We don't need another accountant. We need to trim the fat.