The people have spoken — or at least some of them have spoken. As Victoria’s city councillors immersed themselves in the annual torment of the budget process, they asked residents for their opinions on where tax dollars should be spent and where they shouldn’t.
So what should decision-makers take away from their attempts to take the pulse of the electorate?
Those who took the poll were interested in saving for future city projects and were not enthusiastic about granting police Chief Del Manak’s request for more money for his department. Some thoughts to ponder there, but councillors should be careful about drawing conclusions.
It was far from a scientific survey. The poll was done online, and only 580 people took part. That’s a small sample and the participants were not selected to be representative of the community.
When opinions come from town halls or unscientific surveys, people who feel strongly about issues are more likely to weigh in. That means the results are not representative of the mass of people who didn’t fill out the survey or trek down to the meeting.
Still, town halls and online surveys give politicians and staff a sense of what’s on people’s minds, and it’s likely that, with a few left-field exceptions, those who decide to take part share the concerns of many of their neighbours. They just share those concerns a bit more passionately.
In the city’s poll, 55.6 per cent said that new property tax revenue should be saved for future infrastructure projects. Perhaps that reflects respondents’ experience of ballooning costs for projects such as the Johnson Street Bridge. Let’s just tuck a few million away for the next time something goes wildly over budget, they might say.
Those worries about money were also reflected in questions about the police department’s costs, which take up 23 per cent of the city’s budget.
Of those polled, 45.8 per cent said police spending was too high. Just 25.6 per cent of respondents thought it was in the Goldilocks zone — “just right.” Another 14.6 per cent thought it was too low and about 14 per cent were unsure.
Mayor Lisa Helps speculated that residents might be reacting negatively to Manak’s request for another $2.5 million on his $52.4-million budget. She suggested that they might be surprised by the figure because it was the first major increase in several years.
But for 2017, Manak asked for an increase of $2.2 million, which is similar to this year’s $2.5-million request. The year before, his predecessor, Frank Elsner, asked for $1.7 million more.
However, Manak’s request for six more officers and two more civilians is a bigger jump in staffing than in those years.
It’s clear that increasing numbers of mental-health incidents and overdoses demand more police time. But taxpayers have a conflicted attitude to the police. We apparently don’t like paying for them, but we certainly want them to come when we call.
Helps was concerned about the number of calls, although total calls dropped from 59,000 in 2015 to 58,000 in 2016.
“When an officer comes on shift, it used to be there were five or six calls holding and they could reasonably respond to it. Now, when an officer comes on shift, there are between 20 and 25 calls holding,” she said.
If we are one of the 25, another 4.76 per cent on our tax bill seems like a bargain.
As Helps pointed out, those who are unhappy are more likely to take part in these exercises. The poll is interesting, but councillors should be cautious in using it to take the pulse of the city.
