Citing the city’s rising debt as problematic, mayoral candidate Miranda Rocca-Circelli has pledged a four-point plan to help pare it down.
“I believe that the first step that needs to be taken is a complete assessment to determine if the current programs and services are addressing our community’s wants and needs,” she said in a media release issued this week.
“My goal is to use taxpayers’ money in the most efficient way possible, not by continuing to heap debt and interest payments onto property tax bills for projects we just can’t responsibly afford right now - especially after a two-year pandemic which has decimated so many local businesses and financially negatively affected many local families.”Rocca-Circelli’s four-point plan is as follows:
- Identify our citizens’ needs in terms of programs and services we offer and determine their costs and the value each provides to the community. By redesigning or eliminating programs that don’t meet the needs of our citizens.
- Implement zero-based budgeting whereby each program and service is accountable for what it spends. We cannot continue adding annual percentages to these programs without understanding why those increases are needed.
- Explore a decentralized model for our city which is spread over an immense area. By assigning services and programs to the various amalgamated towns within our city we can foster autonomy and efficiencies to save on costs.
- When we are looking at capital projects in the near future, we should look to smaller projects that can provide an immediate return on investment and ideally provide revenue streams.
After securing its latest $103 million in debt earlier this year for infrastructure projects, the city’s debt load was projected to hit $355 million, which is a significant leap from the $19 million in debt the city held in 2014, Rocca-Circelli points out in her release.Approximately 48 per cent of Greater Sudbury’s $661.8-million operating budget is funded through property taxes. Rather than saddle future generations with debt, she proposes measures such as zero-based budgeting to help keep things in check. This means of budgeting, she said, would “allocate funds to programs that citizens support and develop new programs and services to enhance the foundation of our community.”
Fellow mayoral candidate Evelyn Dutrisac has also pledged to advocate for zero-based budgeting, which city administration weighed the pros and cons of in a report to city council last year and determined it “would increase the amount of administrative time required to produce the budget without incrementally greater benefits.”
However, there remains a push for this means of budgeting, which the city describes as: “Every budget line begins at zero for each new budget period. Each cost and revenue element is assessed to determine if it is still required for delivering the business plan. Services and service levels are reviewed and changes are considered to find a result that achieves desired financial objectives.”
Closely tied to the city’s financial needs, Rocca-Circelli said in her media release, is economic development.
“Sometimes when seeking to expand a community, putting the horse before the cart to maintain the status quo can have a detrimental effect on communities both financially and emotionally,” she said. “The eagerness of decision makers to implement capital projects and/or policies without first ensuring there is a strong financial foundation and a strong need within the community, can be devastating to taxpayers who are the ones footing the bill.”
Rocca-Circelli is one of five registered mayoral candidates in Greater Sudbury. The slate also includes Dutrisac, Don Gravelle, Bob Johnston and Paul Lefebvre. Mayor Brian Bigger has also announced his intention to register.
