The very first thing that grabs ones attention under expenditures is “Administrative Costs (Staff, Volunteers, Office Exp.) $500,000. As a former senior executive, I can tell you that that line would not be accepted in any board room in the country. It smacks of inexperience on the part of the committee. No executive would ever, nor should ever, condone such a lame set of expenses so casually tossed out that used 100 percent of the city’s seed money. (Last I checked, council was our board and the mayor our senior executive.)

A detailed claim is required here and should include how many staff, what their salaries will be by position, what office expenses are anticipated and last but not least, why “volunteers” cost money. Last time I volunteered for a charity event, when lunch break came, I left for my hour and spent my own dime on a lunch, not the “we have to feed them” approach as stated by the chair recently.

Instead this looks like the work of an amateur old women’s card club spending their dues on tea and biscuits. There is no accountability, nor credibility in these expenses.

Then let’s move down to Marketing/Communications at $305,000. How did they come up with that figure? Why not $295,000 or even $300,000? And what will this be spent on anyway? I gather the committee intends to blow hundreds of thousands on newspaper, radio and television advertising then? Is that really necessary to reach the 60,000 or so who live here? I think not.

And before the committee screams that they want to market the party nationally, (or more likely internationally is their pipe dream) to attract folks here, I can tell them now it ain’t gonna happen no matter what they spend. That said, that particular budget line could easily be trimmed to less than $100,000 for the Edmonton market, their prime target, or at least it should be.

The truth is that the single most effective way to attract outsiders here is to utilize current residents. Everyone here has friends, relatives or former residents they know and e-mail could play a pivotal part in contacting those folks. After all, it is those very folks who would be most likely to attend as they have ties to the community. To waste $305,000 on a “shotgun” approach in the media would be a huge mistake. Again, there appears to be a real lack of expertise on the committee.

It would be dead easy for them to set up a web site with a pre-made “invitation” that folks could send to others just by entering their e-mail address. Want to bet no one on the committee has even thought of such a simple and cost effective method?

Of course, all this should be based on a single week long celebration, not a year long “bits and pieces” held “here and there” approach. Their chances of attracting thousands of visitors diminishes with the spreading out of the celebrations. The single big weekend of such a week would attract many, but the format they have chosen is a loser from the get go. You can’t possibly expect visitors to return again and again all year long. Why can’t a committee of supposedly smart folks see the error of their ways?

Moving right along to Special Events Activities at $644,000, again what does this consist of folks? All we know to date is they committed to spend $75,000 on the RCMP Musical Ride and they gave the Guinness Book of Records people $8,000 on another pipe dream that is money down the drain. Who cares if we get 25,000 or 24,999 out to a picnic? A sad and ineffective waste of another $8,000 of our tax dollars.

That leaves $561,000 unaccounted for folks, and only $325,000 of that is a sure thing from the province and the feds. The entire balance of the budget is “money on paper only”, hopefully to be gathered begging from corporate sponsors. Please tell me what corporation in this city will spend that kind of money on such a hit and miss proposition? Short answer: there isn’t one. Isn’t that about the biggest gamble you’ve ever heard?

And what about that parade float the committee keeps harping about? They included a picture of it too:



Note that that hill with a couple of tiny elevators, the chapel and a bridge cost a cool $28,390. What did they do, buy the truck it sits on at that price? And don’t forget we’re gonna blow another $42,550 for expenses to take it to parades and to store it. Want to bet the city has enough room somewhere in public works to store it free and not one committee member even thought to ask?

And just what is the point of a float with things on it that only a resident of St. Albert would recognize? If you want to invite outsiders to our birthday party, wouldn’t a giant cake and the words “come celebrate with us” be much more appropriate? The lack of marketing skills is very apparent and one is left to wonder how they will waste another $305,000 on more mistakes like it.

I could go on analyzing it folks, but I am sick to my stomach at this point.

It’s a bad budget, produced by what appears to be a totally inexperienced committee at a line by line budget, and worst of all, the majority of the funds are “on paper money only”, not real cold hard cash that is already secured.

For that reason alone, city council should apply the brakes to this charade before we wind up with yet another whopping mistake to go with too many others over the past 10 years. There has been no effort whatsoever to provide a detailed budget to the citizens of St. Albert and that is not right when dealing with public funds. Such a situation can only be caused by one of two possible reasons. Either the committee lacks the experience to produce a detailed spending analysis, or it is so vain it doesn’t think it has to be accountable.

It’s the biggest gong show in town and the judges, (city council), need to strike the gong, and fast.

So, where is the leadership? Why hasn’t Mayor Crouse nor anyone on council had the good sense to sound the alarm? Their collective silence only condones a birthday bash neither wanted, nor approved by 90 percent of residents as shown in two recent separate polls. How about it Mayor Crouse and council? Do you still support this nonsense? Voters would like to know. Taxpayers await a reply so they can consider how they might vote in October. A silent mayor and council in a looming crisis doesn’t garner much support.

Am I alone here folks, or what do you see in this sorry excuse for a budget? Are you willing to let council run with this half baked plan?



The Wonders Of The Sistine Chapel

If you have never had the chance to visit the sistine chapel in Rome, here is the best alternative tour you can get. This is simply amazing and one could spend hours looking at everything it depicts. Simply click on the photo below to activate the tour.