Same old story at Amherstburg budget meetings

For years Amherstburg residents have ask for responsible spending by the administration and council. 

But, as we see again even with delegations at the budget meetings it’s the same old story. 

As long as the attitude prevails that "the town has to put the burden on the residents" nothing will change. 

Council was elected to represent the residents to ensure that our tax dollars are spend wisely and they do a very poor job. 

 Is it wise that tourism and culture has a budget of $759,744 and only creates a revenue of $90,000.

That Libro has a budget of $3,286,573 and revenue of $768,313.  That the town employs 186 people of which 94 are full time.

That at least 25 employees are on the sunshine list which costs approximately $3,200,000. 

What does other expenses of $5,070,675 in the budget mean? What are these expenses. 

Administration has done very little if anything to present any cost saving initiatives to the budget process. 

The opposite is true they want to increase staff every year and do less work. Why do we have a deputy CAO if no other town has one, not even Windsor? 

Look at the town's organization chart and you will see that they have a Manager and a supervisor for eight employees. You can easily eliminate one of the managers.  

Nobody is pushing to work more efficient with less so the money saved can go the reserve fund etc. 

Because the easy answer is " the town has to put the burden on the residents" and what have we done?

We elected people that are "nice people" with little or no experience to challenge the town administration and ask the right questions. 

As long as we only hear excuses why the taxes have to go up nothing will change. 

I could go on and on what is wrong with the budget and the council/administration attitude. I can only hope that more people put pressure on council to do their job. 

—Holger Kretschmann

Amherstburg