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LETTER: City budget announcement is 'intentionally misleading'

'Cambridge is drunk on taxing,' says reader
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The following letter from chartered accountant and Cambridge business owner Scott Sinclair was sent to city council and staff in response to Cambridge City Council's 2024 Budget and Business Plan approval announcement:

Your budget announcement is incredibly intentionally misleading.  

Cambridge increased its taxes 7.17 per cent. Suggesting that the increase is 2.58 per cent of the residential tax bill is moot. Comparing that 2.58 per cent to current inflation is moot. The only reason that number has been mentioned is in order to deceive taxpayers and thump your chest that you are somehow showing any sort of fiscal responsibility and restraint. You aren't. 

Your increase is 7.17 per cent. Your increase is not 2.58 per cent. It is double the current rate of inflation.  It is over three times the Bank of Canada's target rate of inflation. 

In other words, you are part of the inflation problem and the high cost of housing problem and not part of the solution. 

Worse yet, you are trying to convince / deceive taxpayers that you are being responsible by using irrelevant info.  The comparison is the political equivalent of fraudulent misrepresentation. You have made an intentionally reckless misrepresentation of fact with the intention of coercing taxpayers into thinking that Cambridge increased its taxes by 2.58 per cent and not 7.17 per cent. 

I have repeatedly said that Cambridge taxes and region taxes need 100 per cent transparency so that people know who they are paying. You are preying on this lack of transparency. It's unethical.

In difficult times, cut. Capital projects and operating projects. If we can't afford 140 programs and services, then don't have them and don't spend $165 million. 

If we can't afford $169 million in infrastructure, then don't spend it. It's very simple. And none of the "other initiatives" in the 2024 budget ought to be undertaken if we can't afford them. 

When people are hurting, as they are now, you cut back. None of the "other initiatives in the 2024 Budget" should be taken on if it means increasing taxes more than 2 per cent. That ought not be too difficult to wrap your heads around.

And where is the mention of the $340 million sitting in investments on the city's balance sheet? 

Why isn't that being used instead of increasing taxes? And where is the thumping of chests that city staff are paid for life with defined benefit pensions whereas taxpayers can only dream of having one and that there is a $77.7 million liability on Cambridge's books to pay for them? 

And why wasn't the $85 million surplus from 2022 rebated back to taxpayers? Or the $35 million surplus in 2021? Who is serving whom?

The "piece de resistance" is the quote by city manager David Calder in which he talks about leadership. 

Firstly, there was a distinct lack of leadership by both council and staff to produce a 7.17 per cent increase (on the heels of years of increases in excess of inflation). 

Secondly, unlike Mayor Jan Liggett, who uses the moot 2.58 per cent to compare to inflation, Calder actually states, " I am proud of how hard our staff have worked to bring in a residential tax increase under the rate of inflation."  100 per cent wrong. 100 per cent deceptive. The increase was double the rate of inflation.

Cambridge is drunk on taxing. I knew this would be a "let them eat cake" budget. 

I am hopeful that voters and taxpayers hold you all accountable for this incredibly irresponsible budget.

Scott Sinclair

Cambridge