Here are today's charts. The first one, as the title suggests, highlights the single biggest problem with City of Yellowknife budgeting (even bigger than yesterday's problem which I also claimed was the biggest - that's how big a problem it is), and it impacts our cost of living significantly so I really hope I get a lot of questions about this - especially from anyone thinking of running for Council in 2018.
The problem is that although City Council can and does have a significant impact on the capital budget, we have very little impact on the operational budget. This is my sixth budget now, and I now feel a desperate need to make at least a tiny bit of headway against this problem.
As you can see from the first chart, the Capital Expenditures line is erratic but it hasn't really gone up much compared to a decade ago. I tried to account for federal investments by subtracting "Other Grants" from "Capital Expenditures" - so that big federal investments like this past summer's road repair work don't overly skew the graph. I didn't account for borrowing, however, which is why there is such a spike in 2013 and 2014 (water treatment plant).
My point is this: the General Fund just keeps on climbing year after year. I think the second chart captures that well. The blue bars are taking over. And not only is the General Fund becoming a bigger and bigger piece of our total budget, it is dwarfing population growth and inflation.
I'm by no means a believer that tax increases are always bad, but when you look at these charts, and especially when you consider our slow population growth, I think you have to agree that this is both unsustainable and unwise. We need to try something, anything, to rein in our general fund budget growth.
I have three ideas for how we can change this state of affairs. Two of them would be permanent changes that would outlast this current Council and therefore would not depend on vigilant Councillors keeping a sharp eye on things. More on those solutions later this week.
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