By AmbrÖse Bierce. Councillor Dave Loewen has been Tweeting again. Recently he shared the good news (see below) about the comparative per capita expenditures on parks and recreation by BC municipalities seeming to show Abbotsford down at #6 out of 23 municipalities with populations over 35,000.
According to the image he shared, Abbotsford ranks higher than all of our Fraser Valley neighbours but well below the majority of the communities in the graph.
There are a few puzzling things about Councillor Loewen’s presentation. The first of those is his own headline – “Contrary to popular belief …!”
I’m not sure if he is referring to the popular belief that Abbotsford has some of the worst parks and recreation programs, fields* and services out of all of the communities mentioned in his survey, or the popular belief that Abbotsford charges some of the highest rates for such middling to poor parks and recreation programs, fields and services.
[*Competitive soccer teams refuse to play on Abbotsford fields because they are dangerous and improperly cared for]He seems to be implying that Abbotsford spends more than our neighbours but less than the majority on parks and recreation. Either way, I still don’t know whether the graph demonstrates that Abbotsford citizens a) are getting a good deal for a what some feel is the crappiest parks and recreation in the Lower Mainland, b) have a good parks and rec department for the money we spend on it, c) should be spending more on parks and rec in order to bring it up to the standards expected by taxpayers in other municipalities, or, d) have great coloured graph makers**.
[** I couldn’t find the graph or the figures Mr Loewen demonstrated in his Tweet anywhere at the Ministry of Community, Sports and Cultural Developments so I speculate it may have been put together by City staff. Not saying the figures are wrong or that Mr Loewen would use facts he couldn’t verify, only that I can’t find them anywhere on the Government of BC’s web site.]
If Mr Loewen is arguing that we should spend more money on parks and recreation, he should first share the fact we have nearly $100 million in long term debt. What is his plan for that? It costs us $9 million per year just to service that debt. Those numbers are right off the Government of BC web site.
And, since he brings it up, let’s look at some other figures I was able to find from 2011 on the Government of BC web site:
2011:
- Net Financial Assets – we lost $17 million in one year
- Total Annualized Liabilities – $212 million (making us # 4 in the Province … that’s out of 162 municipalities by the way)
- Building Permit value equaled $255 million … we were 13th. Vernon had double the amount of building going on that Abbotsford did.
And the big one … in terms of total dollars spend on parks and recreation, we spent $32 million that year. We are 10th on the list. In that year, we have “Other Services” listed at $8 million. Those are our Fees-for-Services such as the Abbotsford Heat and Global Spectrum (which makes sure the AESC loses a little bit money every year).
If we grant that there is no other hidden money, then the total is $40 million divided by 130,000 residents = $307 per capita making us 5th on that list.
Guess how I know the chart Mr Loewen is presenting to the public (as an indication of … I’m still not sure what) is pure unadulterated BS?
See Kelowna there … right above us in the graph as a low spender? Kelowna screwed themselves up with an arena in much the same manner councillors like Mr Loewen did for us, and their “Other Services” equal $37 million. Kelowna owes $158 million and their debt servicing annually is nearly $20 million.
They have less population than Abbotsford … so their per capita expenditure should be much, much higher.
Mr Loewen should verify the pictures he’s given by City staff to simplify the mounds of reading councillors receive every week in order to ensure against creative accounting some bullshit artists have been known to employ in order to come up with crap like this.
What is it going to take to get Abbotsford councillors to start reading their briefing notes and stop looking at pictures of coloured graphs and pie charts drawn by artists in the bowels of City Hall? It was those fictitious colourful pictures of graphs pointing at a 45 degree angle towards a perfect future that got us in this mess.
The Parks and Rec Department has been functioning based on pretty pictures like the ones Mr. Loewen is publishing for over a decade and those pretty pictures were used to convince councillors Loewen, Gibson, Ross, Beck and Smith to rectify our parks and recreation problems by building a giant hockey rink nobody could use for parks or recreation.
Hopefully City Manager George Murray reads and understands the real figures and doesn’t waste a lot of his time on pretty pictures of fabricated reality.
Mr Loewen used to teach logic to our children. For more of his creative Tweets you can follow him here.
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AmbrÖse Bierce
AmbrÖse Bierce
AmbrÖse Bierce is Today’s writer in residence who occasionally gives voice to the concerns of individual citizens and taxpayers who, for a variety of reasons, are unable or unwilling to take a public stand on issues of relevance to the rest of the community. Reasons may include possible loss of job, injury to their business, or any number of quite legitimate reasons to keep their mouths shut.
While all columns and letters on Today are signed by their authors, we have decided to provide this venue for those with legitimate opinions, based on fact, with something to contribute to the public debate in the city. This is not a place for wild venting or personal attacks. AmbrÖse requires you identify yourself to him and explain why you need to keep your identity secure.
To Write AmbrÖse Simply Email Him At: AmbrÖse@Today.ca
What happens to the public’s trust in our political system when our politicians intentionally lie and/or “inadvertently” misdirect the public?
A few years ago I belonged to a group of citizens who were determined to help our local and provincial governments stop Conflict Gravel mining practices in their respective communities. The damages caused by those practices are well documented and the resultant scarification of BC’s communities self-evident.
Conflict Gravel practices have infested Abbotsford more than it has any other BC communities. As a result, thousands of farmland acres and ecologically sensitive lands have been sacrificed to that practice in Abbotsford. The direct outcome is the creation of no-go zones where nothing else but gravel extraction can practically occur in those locations for 20,40, 50+years.
The permitting process that allows Conflict Gravel practices (and all resultant negative community impacts) are ramrodded through the objections of BC communities by the provincial government. The net result, like in Abbotsford’s case, effectively claws massive swaths of land out of communities’ planning process and creates dead-zones that last the length of the gravel mines’ prolonged extraction life-span.
That short synopsis outlines BC communities’ Conflict Gravel battlefront.
The struggle to make reasonable adjustments to that dysfunctional process and those dysfunctional practices were met with the political equivalent of elbows and knees.
As a result of community engagement, it became clear that our governance had somehow, somewhere, lost its way. Our elected representatives no longer represented their constituency, nor their communities best interests. They had instead abdicated that trust in favour of representing narrow corporate interests against their constituency. More disturbing was the fact that those same politicians appeared willing to lie, misdirect and/or otherwise deceive their constituency to ensure their best interests did not “interfere” with those narrow corporate interests.
How did they do it? They simply repeated the “edited” narrative of their “facts” on radio, TV, newspapers and at public meetings. Their capacity to deceive by endurance is beyond what most constituents have the capacity to confront. In the absence of potent political opposition, and/or potent reporters, our democracy has been driven into the ditch.
The City of Abbotsford is not immune to any of these political corruptions.
Thankfully, some admirable exceptions exist locally. Abbotsford has a few Councillors who base decisions on the respectful analysis of the facts. We also have a few capable reporters willing to report the facts no matter how squeamish they make the people whose hand is/was on the wheel. If we allow political dogma to be continue being used as a substitute for facts, we will all become culpable for the impending disaster that will befall us.
It’s impossible to overstate the threat such political corruptions impose on our democracy.
Where does Councillor Loewen & his tweets fit into this critical narrative? His political blathering appears to indicate that he’s remained unchastened by the culpability of his past disastrous decisions and unchastened by his apparent obliviousness of the facts.
It’s enough to make a man weep
Dave Loewen Says:
With respect to the comments made by Ambrose regarding my tweet, my intended message was a simple observation that the Parks, Recreation & Culture budget is not as large as the general public appears to believe. Given the fact that Abbotsford is geographically, the largest municipality in B.C., and the per capita budget is as low as indicated, would suggest that our staff is applying their available financial resources efficiently.
Regarding debt, unfortunately, the Ministry data is three years out of date. As you will note, the table found on the government website indicates those figures are based on start of 2011 data. As a matter of fact, given the annual payments made against our debt (which can be found on the City’s Annual Financial Reports), the debt at the end of 2013 is approximately $78.5m. This is a drop of 36% from the high of $123.5m. in 2006. The City paid an additional $5m. of Water debt this year, as the debenture was coming due; the second debenture will be coming due in 2016, when the balance of the water debt will be eliminated.
An additional fact to point out is that Abbotsford’s debt costs (principal and interest) make up only 3-4% of the City’s annual budget. A debt is not something anyone enjoys, however, debts are a reality that individuals, organizations, businesses, and corporations regularly deal with. It is my humble opinion that Abbotsford’s debt is not onerous. Furthermore, this year’s report from Finance indicates a trend towards greater financial sustainability, with respect to Capital Reserve Funds.
The City link to the report from Finance Department regarding this year’s budget-setting will provide many more graphs that reflect an accurate picture of the state of the City’s financial health (see attached graph), as well as indicators of what lies ahead (eg. a 2014 budget very close to 0% increase). With respect to Mr. Murray’s role, both the information and the budget-setting process bear his “signature”.
Sent to us via email