MalinCal

Tough day to be a tax/rate payer. Council is advancing water rate hikes of up to 74% for homeowners and 95% for businesses by 2030. When governments raise taxes and rates instead of cutting non-essential spending, those costs get passed straight through to customers. Higher utility bills raise the cost of living, push up prices for goods and services, and fuel inflation, even at the municipal level. Infrastructure is a core need. Terrible governance from the past council shouldn't fall on current tax-payers. Funding infrastructure by shaking down taxpayers and businesses while non-priority spending continues is just as a terrible choice as not funding in the first place.

Minister Williams wrote to me about the early release of the September budget documents from a closed session. I will always accept the consequences of informing the public and keeping them in the budget process. Will the Mayor and administration accept the consequences of hiding non-confidential tax-dollar spending from them? I still fully invite the Minister to investigate my release of information, as well as every other complaint of leaks involving all council members, including the Mayor’s current term and his term as councillor. What I released was not confidential information and it was not a wish list. It was the basic budget numbers for essential services that Council asked administration to prepare so we could prioritize spending. Administration delivered the figures. The fear that followed was about making hard choices in public. The Mayor’s rhetoric about personal safety or police risk is manufactured. Nothing confidential was leaked. The public simply saw the real costs the Mayor and administration did not want them to see. His response to my admission was not consistent with how he reacted when made aware of other council members leaking actual confidential information. I’m not afraid of that scrutiny. I’m afraid of a city so unaffordable that people leave. Would I have done the same thing if I could go back? 100%. At the time it needed to be done to keep the taxpayers in the process and to bring awareness to the abuse at city hall. The Mayor’s response has put a major black cloud on future whistleblowers with his reliance on control and intimidation. Advice from one of my colleagues was next time just do what everyone else does and don’t admit it. To those angry or who disagree with my actions: I hope you can still appreciate that, if I can help prioritize spending, you get to be angry toward me while using safer streets, reliable transit, clean water, and working sewers. Those basics are the priority. Secretly pricing people out of the city for vanity projects is not.