Counterpoint: Question #14
The Lindsay Post is running a weekly series of questions, with answers by both the "Yes" and "No" sides of the issues.

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Question #14: Does the City need an independent consultant to determine the costs of de-amalgamation?

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Consultants got us here in the first place

      Should we hire a consultant to determine the cost of de-amalgamation? And we have 600 words to answer this question? Gee! We can answer in only two words: Harry Kitchen.

      Harry was the one hundred thousand dollar consultant who told us we would save $3.5 million in three years by amalgamating. Instead, we're looking a tax hikes of $6 million in the same period of time. Hire a consultant?!

      The City's "visioning" consultants were paid $100 thousand to come up with a community "vision." After a nine month gestation period, they laboured mightily and brought forth the news that residents of the City of Kawartha Lakes like clean air and "good government", whatever that is. Most of us could have come to the same conclusion for the price of a cup of coffee. Hire a consultant?!

     But let's not be too hard on ol' Harry. He probably never expected that the Transition Board would send municipal employees to Vancouver to kick the tires on a new computer system. For a nearly $2 million system, (original cost plus subsequent upgrades), surely we could have had the computer salesman come to us instead. Nor could Harry Kitchen have guessed that the same Transition Board would give a $10 thousand bonus to a municipal employee.

     Who would get to pick the consultant? The "Yes" side would nominate Professor Andrew Sancton, an expert on municipal government whose exhaustive research has concluded, correctly, that no amalgamation has ever saved the taxpayers money.

     The "No" side would perhaps prefer to hire Harry Kitchen again, or someone who would try to scare us into believing that de-amalgamation would send us all to the poor-house.

     In the long run it doesn't matter what some consultant predicts de-amalgamation is going to cost. Taxpayers are more interested in what it actually costs after it's over. What they expect is reasonable information upon which to make an informed decision before the referendum vote. Public debate is the best tool for informing the public. Yet the "No" side is unwilling to engage in debate in public information meetings. We wonder why?

     There is no "sticker price" for an off-the-shelf de-amalgamation. It costs as much as, or as little as, the public officials want to make it cost. It cost local taxpayers about $130 per household to do the City of Kawartha Lakes amalgamation after the provincial government chipped in 75% of the cost from the Municipal Restructuring Fund. Harry (the consultant) Kitchen, on the other hand, predicted that the bill would be around $40 per household, with the same provincial funding.

     The difference between a price tag of $130 and one of $40 is the people doing the de-amalgamating. This time around they won't be an appointed Transition Board. Instead, they will be elected councillors: people whose re-election depends on keeping the cost down. Hire a consultant? We on the "Yes" side would rather stick pins in our biceps.

     We have now used about 500 words of our 600-word allotment. The "No" side is welcome to our left-over 100 words.