With the Sunshine Coast Regional District (SCRD) 2012 budget we fell down a flight of stairs and called it good news. Gibsons' share came in at a 6.53 per cent increase and the overall SCRD increase is 3.37 percent. According to Moody's International Finance 2009 Credit Analysis,the SCRD's debt per capita registers among some of the highest in the province.
SCRD budgets are unrelated to incomes and GDP here on the Coast.
In 2008 the bottom fell out of the global economy and many on the Coast saw their net worth and incomes plummet. Did the SCRD budgets alter their upward path appreciably? No.
We had new SCRD representatives on the board this budget cycle and no doubt they did their best to grapple with the hall of mirrors that is the SCRD budget process. In the coming year the process needs to be amended to start at zero - and zero is not last year's budget - zero means zero - everything should be re-examined for fiscal sustainability.
It is time to ask ourselves regularly what and who are the job killers on the Coast?
Patrick Muncaster
Gibsons
