‘Deep blind trust’

Dear Editor:

RE: Centre Wellington looking at 3.5% tax increase in 2025, Dec. 5.

There is something profoundly troubling when elected representatives have such a deep blind trust of the information they receive from senior staff that they cannot even form a question and do basic addition concerning fiscal matters.

The mayor and council of Centre Wellington exhibited this at the Dec. 3 budget meeting.

I understood that in June the staff projected the tax increase would be 6.28% and assessment growth would be 1.38% for a total increase of revenue from both to be 7.66% for the operations budget. Council wanted taxes to be 4.5% or less.

In a July letter I predicted MPAC assessment would increase tax revenues for Centre Wellington.The new budget presented on Dec. 3 reported a huge assessment income growth of 6.69% so senior staff proposed a 3.49% tax increase. It appears the mayor and council were so delighted they immediately stopped thinking because they asserted themselves to staff in June to have taxes less than 4.5% and they got 3.49%. Aren’t we a bold and assertive council?

Wait a minute ... 6.69% assessment growth and 3.49% tax increase is a 10.18% tax increase in revenue for Centre Wellington. The 3.49% is not a neutral increase of taxes, nor did the staff have to do a lot of work to reduce the taxes from 6.28% as the CAO claimed.

The tax increase should only have been 1.38% using the June 2025 expenses, but with the termite expense reduction it could have been zero tax increase. That would have been good budgeting in these inflationary times that is also a recession.

Exploiting the windfall opportunity from the assessment growth, and blind trust of council, the senior staff “worked hard” to add 8.5 more staff to fill the $44-million Taj Mahal operations facility.

Stephen Kitras,
Centre Wellington