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THUNDER BAY – City councillors say a controversial process to identify service cuts has helped nudge the municipal budget in the right direction, even as it has fallen well short of council’s targeted savings.
In an interview, Mayor Ken Boshcoff acknowledged that approach diverged from many candidates’ rhetoric around limiting tax increases during last year’s municipal election. Council has approved just over half a million dollars in cuts so far through that process, axing things like the sister cities program, movie nights in the park, fireworks, and a Current River EMS station, and scaling back the playgrounds program, outdoor pool hours, and downtown litter pick-up.
“I think you’ll see a more seasoned group coming into the fall round of budget discussions, with a much more stable perspective on how this can happen.” “I firmly believe there’s been progress made, and this is an iterative process,” he said. “It’s going to take a number of steps to get to where we need to get to."
"We might be surprised that some of the stakeholders could collaborate with us and come up with different solutions." However, he argued the process had served as “a bit of an education for all of council about, if you want to make this level of cuts, what the impact is on the citizens.” “The public is not going to be ready to accept a model of sustainability if it means losing services they cherish, but that might be the only way we can become financially sustainable,” he said.“You can’t have it all – you can’t have low taxes and all your services and way above-inflationary increases in emergency services,” he said. “It’s just not doable.”In a June meeting, Coun.
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