Tonight, a special installment of City Council Theatre titled, “Budget, Bring It On!” starring Mill Rate Increase and Utility Rate Increase with special guests stars Property Value Reassessment and Tennis Court Planning Update.
Normally, before budget night I’ll write some rant about all the anti-tax blather that the Canadian Federation Of Independent Business has submitted or I’ll ramble about the gap between projected capital expenditures for 2013 versus the actual budgeted capital expenditures for 2013. And then I might go on about something else entirely just to change it up from last year.
But I’ve already written a post about capital spending (which includes our annual graphic showing Regina’s Procrastination Gap).
And it’s occurred to me that if I write any more now about my impressions of the budget I’ll telegraph all the clever, gotcha questions I have planned for the post-council scrum. (Shhhhhhhh. I don’t actually have any clever, gotcha questions planned for tonight. But don’t tell Mayor Fougere that.)
But I will mention that if you want to watch all the budget-related shenanigans you can show up at city hall or tune into Access television starting at 5:30 pm. And if you miss it, you can watch the video on the city’s website a few days later. (Incidentally, I spoke to the city’s tech wizard, Philippe Leclerc — what? I’m pretty sure “tech wizard” is his actual job title — and he said that it takes a bit to get the video online because they mark it up so you can jump around by clicking on the report titles in the agenda. I’ve tried it out and it’s really slick and has saved me a load of time.)
And if you’re just wanting the meeting summarized for you in 140 character chunks, I’ll be live-tweeting it at our brand new twitter feed that we’ll be using exclusively to comment on city hall meetings: @PDcityhall. Please feel free to direct comments there throughout the night. It’ll help break up the monotony.
