Wellllll… looks like I got a little carried away with the Cisk beer yesterday. Remember when I said that, based on the Regina Budget Highlights document, the road renewal budget for 2015 was $19.8 million and that that’s only a $100 thousand increase over 2014?
Yeah. That wasn’t right. That wasn’t right at all. Stupid me, relying on the Highlights document to fully reflect what’s in the budget.
Like I said, I didn’t read the actual budget. I was just riffing on what I’d read in that damned Highlights document. Well, today I thought, what the hell, I’ll take a closer look at some other stuff. And, lo and behold, I discovered that the Road Renewal budget isn’t $19.8 million.
It’s $21.7 million. And that’s a $2 million boost to their budget. That’s a SUBSTANTIAL increase. Close to the record boost the department received back in 2008.
See, you can read it for yourself in the actual budget…
Seems that dedicated one per cent mill rate bump is in fact cumulative with last year’s mill rate bump. And I’m an asshole for having said otherwise.
So there you go. That’s what happens when you only read the promo lit the city puts out and the media coverage online and then jump to a bunch of conclusions without reading the budget itself.
I screwed up. I’m the jerk. Next year I’ll do the live-tweet read-through before shooting my mouth off.
That said, I’m not going to take back anything I wrote yesterday because that’d be dishonest. I’ll leave that post up there to keep me humble.
And I do apologize unreservedly to City Manager Glen Davies, City Council and anybody else at City Hall who may have read that stupid, stupid post and felt offended.
This is for you…
