There has been lots of discussion on the Hawthorne Villager web forum on the aftermath of the 2011 Milton budget that was passed by the committee on Monday. You can follow it here.
I made a comment on one of the threads regarding the importance of public involvement in the budget process that I’ll post here as well. For those that don’t know, the budget process just doesn’t happen at the end of the year. Its a result of many months of work from town staff, reports to council and public feedback.
Its important that the residents of Milton are involved in that process, and as I outline in my post on the Villager, we have many new faces on council that are “connected” and available to get that important feedback from taxpayers and in this coming year we will be looking at the 2012 budget. (I know we JUST finished with 2011 and now were on to 2012!)
Next year will be even more of a challenge as further operational costs from the Milton Centre for the Arts, the new library and the Milton Sports Centre come online. There’s the challenge of what kind of state our economy will be in and how it will affect long term projections. Its important we get the feedback from the public on what you feel the town’s priorities should be.
Next Monday is the council meeting where we will be reviewing the last budget committee report and passing (?) the 2011 budget. As I said, after this, we look forward towards 2012 and what Milton will look like then, what we will be spending money on, what roads will be developed or set into the pipeline and you need to be part of it.
Here’s my post from the Villager. Feel free to comment there or here.
The beauty of having so many new councillors who are “connected” online and very active in the community is that this coming budget process – which is a public process – will become MORE public. Meetings will be promoted through councillors websites, through this board and others and hopefully more throughout the local media (Champion, MiltonTodayTV, TV Cogeco etc)
I KNOW my collegues will work together to have even MORE budget town hall meetings through this process to get even MORE input from the public. Its not a criticism of the past, but more of a comment for the future.
Budgets aren’t on everyone’s top 10 lists of things to do during the week but hopefully we can get more feedback from Milton residents on what they want. A continuation of sorts from the election campaign. I campaigned on continuing to knock on doors between campaigns and I intend to do so and challenge my council friends to do the same.
We are fully aware of mistakes made in the past by other municipalities like Mississauga and Bramtpon to name a couple and we want to ensure that doesn’t happen here.
As long as the process is open as much as possible to the public and they have their say on major issues like a further tax levy for hospital expansion for increases in spending for transit, we will have done our job.
Ive talked with all my council friends and said that when we look at these budget figures to look at them like were doing our home budgets. Wants vs needs and if we can find savings or further efficiencies we have a duty to do so. We also need to look at both the long range and the short term as well. Is the economy doing well…what is the outlook for the next few years…what is the long range outlook for the next ten years. Some questions are easily answered and some are more difficult and will require debate. We have to look at the long range goals of the town of Milton…what demands are placed on us from other levels of government like the Region of Halton and the Province of Ontario (which directs our growth goals)
If you thought the last few years saw a lot of change, as the old saying goes, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Changes are happening from all directions…Milton Education Village, Derry Green Corporate Business Park, Boyne Survey, the possible hospital expansion and the intensification of Main Street.
Im open to any and all suggestions and if they make sense, we can move forward on them. Democracy is like a conversation…it cant be one way…which is why we need your input and feedback. That’s what a majority of us were elected on this past October and now were in office we cant forget those reasons.
Keep the debate coming …