PEI needs to clean up Charlottetown City Hall mess • Troy Media
Charlottetown taxpayers are being taken to the cleaners by out-of-control metropolis officers and authorities bureaucrats. After years of abuse, it’s time for Prince Edward Island Premier Dennis King to shine a light-weight on this sorry saga.
To know the plight of Charlottetown taxpayers, take into account this situation.
Think about you’re at your favorite restaurant. Though inflation may imply you’re tight on money, you’ve determined to take your greatest buddy out for breakfast for his birthday. You inform him to order something on the menu as a deal with to have fun. When the waiter comes, your buddy tells the waiter to convey him one in every of the whole lot.
On the finish of the meal, loads of meals is wasted and also you’re caught with an enormous invoice that it’s important to put in your bank card.
Most of us wouldn’t take that buddy out for a meal once more subsequent 12 months. However when your buddy occurs to be the federal government, you’ve got little selection.
It seems that Charlottetown has quite a lot of officers and workers who’re identical to that buddy you took out for breakfast. While you give an inch, they take a mile.
In 2019, Charlottetown despatched its mayor, metropolis councillors, and several other workers members to the Federation of Municipalities Convention. Whereas there, most of them didn’t invoice taxpayers for 3 meals a day, as one may count on. At least 10 elected officers and workers billed taxpayers for between 5 and 6 meals per day.
Though the price of the ticket coated two meals and snacks per day for each attendee on the convention, Charlottetown’s delegation nonetheless managed to rack up nearly $9,000 in additional meal bills over simply 5 days.
If convention attendees had been actually consuming six meals per day, we will solely hope that all of them introduced some heartburn and acid reflux disease capsules.
Taxpayers had been additionally billed for nearly $500 in alcohol bills, though metropolis coverage explicitly says alcohol bills shouldn’t be reimbursed.
Sadly, this isn’t an remoted incident. Metropolis officers and workers have a protracted historical past of flagrantly abusing taxpayer {dollars}. That is simply the tip of the iceberg.
Paperwork obtained by CBC Information present that there have been ongoing issues with Charlottetown’s monetary information for years.
Paperwork from town’s accountants clearly present that there has been “usually poor monetary administration relating to buying and accounting procedures.”
The paperwork also present that issues in regards to the metropolis’s spending practices weren’t correctly relayed to these in positions of authority, resembling town’s comptroller.
The monetary mess at Charlottetown’s metropolis corridor is starting to garner consideration on the legislature.
The Opposition is rightly demanding that the Premier and his communities minister, Jamie Fox, take motion and launch a full assessment of town’s spending practices.
“It’s fairly clear that the province must be stepping in,” said Opposition MLA Steve Howard.
Howard is true. After years of abuse of taxpayer {dollars} in Charlottetown, somebody has to start cleansing up metropolis corridor.
Paperwork present that provincial bureaucrats have been involved in regards to the metropolis of Charlottetown’s monetary administration since not less than January of 2020. But, the King authorities hasn’t taken satisfactory steps to handle these issues.
The communities minister says an out of doors authorized assessment of Charlottetown’s spending practices revealed no violations of the Municipal Governance Act. If that’s true, it’s laborious to not suppose that whoever was conducting the authorized assessment had a blindfold on.
Even so, an out of doors authorized assessment with findings not relayed to the general public merely isn’t enough. Charlottetown taxpayers deserve a full provincial assessment with findings shared for all to see.
It’s time for the King authorities to step as much as the plate and defend Charlottetown taxpayers, who’ve been taken benefit of by native authorities for a lot too lengthy.
Jay Goldberg is the Ontario & Interim Atlantic Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
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