The Second All-Candidates' Meeting and the Debenture

Wednesday night the second of the all-candidates' meetings was held, this time hosted by the Collingwood Connection, again held at the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 63.

The format was quite different from the Chamber meeting (or properly meetings, since it was split into two parts to accommodate the large number of council candidates). There was no TV to record it this time. Council candidates could not speak nor answer audience questions - instead we were given a table along the walls on which we could display literature and at which we could speak to residents. Basically we had little to do once the speeches got started.

I made a few notes while I was listening. Rick and Sandra both spoke about what they wanted to do for the community and their goals. Norm and Kathy spoke mostly about themselves, their accomplishments, their roles on other agencies and why they felt they qualified for the role. I'm not sure how many caught that, but it didn't strike me that the "me-me-me" approach would find a lot of supporters.

Norm also peppered his speech with what I felt were too many figures. I wondered how many listeners understood his references. It seemed rather too technical for the audience.

I thought Rick had a better speech this time around and he sounded more relaxed and confident.

Ray tried to be more serious - except for the comic moment when he unrolled the poster of the steer and said "the bull stops here." That approach was probably a poor choice - his straight comments lacked the sting - albeit with humour - of his previous performance. He didn't score as many points this time as before.

Mike didn't seem to me to come across as strongly this time, and I felt his comments about not needing experience to run a municipal corporation - one that is vastly different than any private corporation - were too self serving and defensive - and a shot at the experienced candidates. After all, he was saying that all those years on council learning, working, serving on committees and boards were wasted because anyone could walk in off the street and do better.

Eamon was, well, himself again. I'm sure his heart is in the right place, but his lack of preparation and knowledge about some of the issues is very obvious.

I don't know if the meeting changed a lot of minds about who to vote for, at least in the two top positions. The format was not really good for allowing the council candidates a chance to present themselves, so I doubt it made any difference for us.

A comment on one of the running themes: the debenture debt. No one - not even the incumbents - really explained the debt, or spoke about how almost half of it was to be paid not from taxes, but from development charges, user agreements (such as the South Side servicing debenture which will be paid back by the property owners and $1 million comes from the BIA for the downtown revitalization) or water rates.

The tax-based debenture has gone up, but not as dramatically as it is sometimes portrayed. Here are the debenture figures in brief, with sources of funding:

• Downtown Phase 1 (Fall 2010 completion) - $2,000,000 General Taxation
• Downtown Phase 1 (Fall 2010 completion - $1,000,000 BIA Apportionment
• First Street Widening (Spring/Summer 2010) - $1,580,000 General Taxation
• Sewer Renewal Contracts 4,5 - $5,439,000 Water/Sewer Surcharge
• Heritage Park Phase 1 (Fall 2010) - $1,500,000 General Taxation
• Waterfront Trail (Spring/Summer 2010) - $1,800,000 General Taxation
• Library/Municipal Office(January 2010) - $6,000,000 General Taxation

The 2009 balance is broken down as follows:

• $23.6 million in total town plus 4.3 in water for overall total of 28 million
• $9.2 million is sewer debt
• $5.5 million is south servicing recoverable from the residents plus an additional 800k water infrastructure component
• The rest - $8.9 million - is recoverable from taxes

From the 2006 year end working papers:

• Total is $23,827,000
• Town debentures total $18,982,000
• This is made up of sewer debt of $11 million with general tax funded debt of $7,982,000
• Water is another $4,845,000

A question was asked when the town would ever be out of debt. The answer is never. Towns are not private corporations and are governed by many rules and regulations as to what we can charge for services. We cannot make a profit. We can create reserves from taxes not spent, but those are usually project or asset specific. If we create a reserve for, say, parking, we can't spend it on a new fire truck.

We don't have bank accounts with millions of extra dollars in them to pay for a project like the downtown revitalization. Since we never know very far in advance when federal or provincial funding will be available, when it does get offered, we have to borrow to match our portion of the funding (as in the BIA project) or miss out on the other governmental funding.

Today with very low interest rates, we can borrow without a great financial burden in the repayment. Having money sit in a bank account where it does not collect interest does not make a lot of financial sense to me.

And sometimes you have unexpected reasons to borrow - like the collapse of a sewer line that needs to be replaced immediately.