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I always hated George Smitherman and I wouldn't compare Colin at all to him. First knock against - high school dropout. Anybody can be a smooth talker but it boggled my mind how he could be put in any position of authority with lack of a basic education. Never once thought he was a great leader. George is one of the reasons I wasn't a huge McGuinty fan. Didn't show well on McGuinty that he felt this guy could be put in change of any ministry let alone Health (aack), Infrastructure or be Deputy Premier!

What do our Councillors do (or we hope most of them do). Read the staff reports for Council and Standing Committee meetings, and the various Boards and Volunteer Committees they sit on. Communicate what they feel is relevant to their wards with Constituents. If they have concerns about items being brought up in the reports they I expect they speak to colleagues in other jurisdictions to compare notes and do some research so they can effectively challenge items. Thus, I also expect them to network and attend professional development meetings for municipal leaders like the Association of Ontario Municipalities conventions and Federation of Canadian Municipality meetings to gain experience from the professionals that present there on various topics and bring those ideas back to Council and to staff (senior staff also attend these for the same reason). I don't expect them to go for the food and photo ops! I expect them to communicate and listen to residents. There is a great deal of expertise locally when you start actively participating in local functions and activities that provide other opportunities to get alternative opinions as well as gain a pulse on what local concerns are. They should be good networkers, well spoken, smart. I don't care their provincial and federal political affiliations. I care that they can have an intelligent discussion with their peers and present their viewpoints and be open-minded to listen to other views and not be blinded by partisanship. This is also their function sitting on Advisory Committees and Boards - listen to community concerns on the various subject matters and bring them to the board/committee for discussion and use that for guiding staff in policy direction.

What is the difference between part-time and full-time councillors? In my opinion - salary (enough to make it worth doing full-time), and having an office, staff, and expense account (seems to come with being full-time), and more time to do the above, and attend public events which is part of networking with the community. I'm not sure I buy into the debate point often used that full-time salary attracts better calibre candidates (using the George Smitherman example). I don't see Cities with full-time councillors like Mississauga, Toronto etc doing any better a job than our part-time personally.

I compare Colin to Smitherman in the sense that he is judged a good counsellor because he's visible and hard working. These are great things, but I'm just saying that if you work really hard at raising costs and reducing service quality, your not a value to your community, your incompetent. I don't understand why some people think otherwise.

On the things that have impacted my life, this is what I have seen of him.

Agreed.

Thanks Kim. Very well written and very informative. I completely agree with your post, and your opinion about what our local councillors should be doing - now the question is "are they doing what is expected of them to do?". I am not sure what ward you live in, however, if you take the councillor of your ward and look back 4 years ... have they done their job based on what you've stated above?

Is there any argument against blue bags? They sound like a no brainer to me.

Well, Mike Cluett was my local ward councillor. I think he did the job of local councillor well. I sat on a volunteer committee with him for 4 years. He was prepared for meetings. He listened, provided background on council decisions, and worked well with the staff members and committee members - but didn't just sit there and "take" staff opinion either. He advocated for residents - one of the best examples was advocating for residents around Oak View Park. They were very vocal about the sand base in the playground. He was able to lobby staff and get the capital budget money allocated for having the base replaced with wood chips and associated drainage fixed. He was very active in working with Irma Coulson Parent Council to get a crossing guard at Sauve and Derry, even though the traffic counts didn't warrant it - it was something the school staff and parent council felt strongly about based on daily observation of cars and kids at that crossing. I've observed him at Council meetings and again, it's obvious he has read the background reports and done some background research - particularly on contentious budget items like transit funding, but also helped get support for the increased budget for park grass cutting and overseeding because that's what he heard many residents complaining about and thus deemed it was a priority worth funding. He makes himself available for questions on social media (not so much here anymore like most councillors, but twitter, facebook, and his web page as well as in person at community events). He had traffic counts done when asked. They didn't always come out like residents would hope, but he used his head with understanding the numbers and the issues and sometimes sided with staff where it made sense (Meighan Way speed control) and sometimes not (Irma Coulson crossing guard). We don't always like the answers we get on some things (like the pace of the High School landscaping) but you could count on Mike to get a reply and work through the mire of red tape even if it may be longer than we'd hope for. I expect the same from him as Regional Councillor, unlike our previous regional councillor who obviously didn't read reports, do adequate research, had criminal charges brought against him, and was generally a really, really bad councillor.

Bremer, I'd have to do some reading but I'd hazard a guess the issue with blue bags would be up-charges relating to the existing contractor retrofitting technology to seperate the plastic film from the other recyclables and the sorting technology used. Peel invested significant capital budget dollars into municipally owned facility with the bag-breaking and seperation technology. http://www.region.peel.on.ca/pw/waste/f ... /piwmf.htm I don't believe at this point in time Halton has this and relys on what the subcontractor (Emterra) source seperation technology is, and it's limitations. Since Emterra handles Mississauga/Peel recycling after it goes through the municipal facility with the bag-breaker, I'd guess Emterra's Burlington facility doesn't have it. Toronto did something similar to be able to try and manage organics and use plastic bags as liners where most municipalities insist on compostable bags.

Well, Mike Cluett was my local ward councillor. I think he did the job of local councillor well. I sat on a volunteer committee with him for 4 years. He was prepared for meetings. He listened, provided background on council decisions, and worked well with the staff members and committee members - but didn't just sit there and "take" staff opinion either. He advocated for residents - one of the best examples was advocating for residents around Oak View Park. They were very vocal about the sand base in the playground. He was able to lobby staff and get the capital budget money allocated for having the base replaced with wood chips and associated drainage fixed. He was very active in working with Irma Coulson Parent Council to get a crossing guard at Sauve and Derry, even though the traffic counts didn't warrant it - it was something the school staff and parent council felt strongly about based on daily observation of cars and kids at that crossing. I've observed him at Council meetings and again, it's obvious he has read the background reports and done some background research - particularly on contentious budget items like transit funding, but also helped get support for the increased budget for park grass cutting and overseeding because that's what he heard many residents complaining about and thus deemed it was a priority worth funding. He makes himself available for questions on social media (not so much here anymore like most councillors, but twitter, facebook, and his web page as well as in person at community events). He had traffic counts done when asked. They didn't always come out like residents would hope, but he used his head with understanding the numbers and the issues and sometimes sided with staff where it made sense (Meighan Way speed control) and sometimes not (Irma Coulson crossing guard). We don't always like the answers we get on some things (like the pace of the High School landscaping) but you could count on Mike to get a reply and work through the mire of red tape even if it may be longer than we'd hope for. I expect the same from him as Regional Councillor, unlike our previous regional councillor who obviously didn't read reports, do adequate research, had criminal charges brought against him, and was generally a really, really bad councillor.

Bremer, I'd have to do some reading but I'd hazard a guess the issue with blue bags would be up-charges relating to the existing contractor retrofitting technology to seperate the plastic film from the other recyclables and the sorting technology used. Peel invested significant capital budget dollars into municipally owned facility with the bag-breaking and seperation technology. http://www.region.peel.on.ca/pw/waste/f ... /piwmf.htm I don't believe at this point in time Halton has this and relys on what the subcontractor (Emterra) source seperation technology is, and it's limitations. Since Emterra handles Mississauga/Peel recycling after it goes through the municipal facility with the bag-breaker, I'd guess Emterra's Burlington facility doesn't have it. Toronto did something similar to be able to try and manage organics and use plastic bags as liners where most municipalities insist on compostable bags.

" Mayor Gord Krantz told the Champion that when the budget is being deliberated, he will not support a municipal tax rate increase (estimated 5.5 per cent) higher than the level of inflation "
http://www.insidehalton.com/news-story/ ... town-hall/

There he goes again!
Wonder if he plans to influence the tax increase.

Stabilization Reserves are meant to offset extraordinary circumstances, unforeseen one-time events and manage cash flows and fluctuations in tax levies, etc. However we've been raiding our reserves on a yearly basis. Looking at the graphs you can easily guesstimate when we hit 0. 2018 sounds like a great year for members of council to retire.

We have targets on what levels our reserve funds should be at. But we've been depleting them for some time, and currently there are no plans to replenish (legally we're not allowed to run a deficit). My guess is we'll start looking for assets and real estate to sell to try and fill in some of the financial holes. The Town owns a lot of different financial assets, so look for future "For sale" signs on some town assets probably.

Yes we have the lowest tax rate in the GTA outside of Toronto. But we've kept it low in several years by partially "running off our reserves". When they hit zero...what next?....sell town assets?...then what next?....

I wish more people knew how a lever & fulcrum work. If we made small adjustments in past years to bolster our reserves and not deplete them we'd be better off. But instead we wait until it's a near crisis before doing something. This is just my opinion. At the end of the year we usually have a small surplus, which we put back into the reserve, but the amount we pull out each year is always significantly larger than the small surplus we put back in. The numbers don't lie. The graph below uses actuals for 2011-2013 and town estimates for 2014-2015.

p.s. I bet we'll spend the most time talking about really small $5k-40k operating items -the big elephants in the room get skimmed over with little mention.

Asset Management, financial reserves, debentures, long term financial trends - boring....

A bike statue at Louis St. Laurent & Tremaine? Bingo...let's talk about that for 30 minutes

Your interest in passport pictures is becoming clearer as I am reading this. Skip town while you still can. HaHa.

You guys could ….cut spending?

2018 is perfect though. That’s the year I targeted for getting out of this place.

There are some items in the budget decision packages I'd vote to cut.

But what happens is anything that gets cut, ends up slightly lowering the tax levy. Me proposing to redirect any cuts in spending to our reserve funds gets zero support. So cutting spending (where we think the spending isn't warranted) will have an impact on your current taxes but will have no impact on the town's financial vulnerability.

Forgive my ignorance. Cutting spending will force a cut to my taxes as well? I refuse to believe the government can’t find a way to still take my money. Keep my money guys! Just spend it wisely and I’m good!

it all depends what a majority on council vote for

One proposal could be we take 50% of decision budget cuts and redirect to tax stabilization fund and the other 50% give back to tax payer in lowering the tax rate

But I don't think a majority will support that