Rhino's Rambings - The Good, The Really Good, The Bad And The Really Ugly

By Robert Thomas - Opinion/Commentary

Well after a week off due to health problems here we go with my musings on some of the political events around the City.

THE GOOD

It came as a great surprise the May Professional Bull Riding (PBR) and Washboard Union concert event at Mosaic Place turned a tidy profit of $18,000 not a bad result given what seemed like sluggish ticket sales.

I personally phoned City Manager Jim Puffalt and congratulated him for a job well done on this one and to pass along a message from some ot the rodeo people who popularize this site and that is is the PBR coming back next year?

Well according to Puffalt they are looking at a PBR event in 2020 but if it comes back it likely will not have a concert portion.

So don’t put away that cowboy hat or worse yet sell it cheaply at a neighbour’s garage sale because there is a good chance there may be another opportunity to wear it at a bucking good time in 2020 at Mosaic Place.

THE REALLY GOOD

One of the really good things a couple of business people in the Downtown core wanted to point out to me was the positive effects concerts are having on the Downtown core.

So I took up the gauntlet and did some snooping to really see what effect it is having and which concert and event seems to leave the most dollars and economic activity in the hands of local business.

I asked some of the business owners or staff I knew would not feed me the stuff they had to shovel after the aforementioned PBR and I got the real scoop in it all.

What I learnt is that certain events do generate a varying degree of spinoffs for local Downtown businesses. And believe it or not it is not the great and fancy concert events being put on at Mosaic Place which are generating the most economic activity but it is the Moose Jaw Cultural Centre which seems to be putting more chi ching in the cash registers of local businesses.

So how do I know this?

Well I spoke to restaurants and food outlets in a two block radius of City Hall and what I learnt is that each event seems to bring out a certain crowd to the restaurants and bars to a varying degree.

The Warriors games help but since the majority of the fans are from Moose Jaw and there are more of them they do not generate the massive influx into the largest number of eating and drinking establishments. Additionally Mosaic Place is trying to increase its own food and drink revenue so they make it a total game day experience by offering a pre-game buffet meal and that cuts into, to some extent, the restaurant seeking crowd.

Additionally a good portion of Warriors fans head straight to the rink and then seem to propogate the drive thrus of local fast food restaurants post game.

Similarly the big concerts put on by Mosaic Place do have an impact on the Downtown bars and restaurants but their impact is often felt further away from the Downtown core.

So who is the champion when it comes to making Downtown businesses the happiest when it comes to the bottom line?

Well it is the Moose Jaw Cultural Centre.

Almost every business I spoke to that would cater to the Downtown entertainment crowd told me the larger number and variety of events the Cultural Centre puts on not only has out of town people stopping in for sit down meals but a lot of local people call it a night with first dinner and a show.

And this is where it really gets good and that is if you take a look at the Cultural Centre’s bottom line it seems getting rid of let us just say a thrice of non-paying tenants (two of whom who in my opinion I am hoping since they have left town, hopefully sell their house and lets just say sculpt a cheque to the Cultual Centre as it would be a real Kodak moment), an over abundance of deadwood and converting to a more effective and even less costly management structure the Cultural Centre has managed to turn around a major economic storm.

In addition they have increased not only the number of events but expotentially the number of people coming to the events adding to the Cultural Centre’s bottom line. It had to be the highlight of the third party budget requests held at a special City Council meeting on November 18th except those cute burrowing owls stole the show - even pooping on the council chamber’s carpet - and out marketed the other groups.

Despite the poorer economy the new strategy seems to be working and it is having some positive effects for the Downtown businesses most likely to be the direct benificiaries of events.

THE BAD

Well when it comes to bad here is hoping Saint Nicholas is not in a really vile mood and not only fills their Christmas stockings with coal but the carbon tax bill to match.

And who should be so deserving? Well it should be none other than what is happening at City Hall and the budget.

Despite what you are hearing this in my opinion is not a status quo budget that is set to have little effect on the pocket books of the average City of Moose Jaw taxpayer. It is going to hit hard in what are very tough times for many residential and commercial property owners.

The bad thing about it is for many people in the community is how Administration is trying to illustrate it with more than a couple telling me it is out right decietful in their opinions and they would love to have the opportunity to go down to City Hall and tell Council just that.

Now whether they are willing to go that far is debateable but at the same time one needs to take a look at what they are saying.

At the present time they are selling what is a status quo budget of 2.02 percent without any additional add ons which we found out at last night’s special meeting of City Council are not clearly tabulated so much so that Councillor Dawn Luhning gave the constructive criticism that it would be nice to see exactly what the new spending initiatives will do to the proposed tax increase.

If even a financial planner with a degree in commerce from the University of Saskathewan cannot figure this stuff out how do you think ordinary residents feel looking at it all?

Then there was Councillor Brian Swanson pointing out how all of the hidden increases - such as the five percent water and six percent sewer and the proposed $100 levy - actually add up to an increase just over eight percent for the average homeowner.

The budget documents also hid something inadverdantly that the new Infrastructure Levy is not $85 but is actually $100 as Administration never spelled out that they never took out the $15 being paid this year on the soon to be abolished Hospital Levy.

Another thing to remember is that the average home is just that an average home assessment. It is not a median where there are the same number of homes in higher value and lower value reflected in it. So if the average home assessment is what I suspect to actually entail is you may well find a disproportionate number of lower assessed homeowners picking up a very large percentage increase in what they pay the City each year.

So I deicided to focus in on the home I live in and how about $850 is the City’s take on the municipal tax bill.

So lets start off with that average 2.02 percent tax increase and top of that add the $85 levy which in fact works out to a 10 percent increase in what I have to pay to the city. Now let us add to that the increase in the water and sewer bill based upon my usage of three more percent. So what I am looking at paying percentage-wise to the City this year is a hand grenade figure is another 15 percent.

So why do I say a hand grenade figure? Well when I say this what I am talking about I am close to the amount and when it goes off in the end I am going to feel a concussion if not a bit of a sting.

For other people in lower assessed homes and many of them on limited pensions or the working poor they are going to be experiencing the same thing.

For many businesses the increase in property tax is going to be ugly as they collectively have to pay 20 percent of what is collected in total by the City. With commercial property owners year over year winning it seems a continual record of appeals for incorrectly assessed properties it continues to sting. For a business sector where many are pushed to the max it is hard to see how many are going to make it.

The question in my opinion needs to be asked is when do we hit the breaking point?

THE REALLY UGLY

The spectre of the meth crisis - which Moose Jaw is now into its fifth year of - raised its ugly head once again as Council reviewed the Moose Jaw Police Service (MJPS) budget.

It all seemed to come down to one pinnacle moment in the debate when Councillor Heather Eby said she no longer felt safe walking across the 4th Avenue Bridge at night following a Moose Jaw Warrior’s hockey game due to the proliferation of Meth.

It personally left me thinking about what got us here and how this is not some problem coming off of some corridor nor how if they threw the evil Polupski in jail this was all going to end.

If you take a really good read of the internal MJPS files I acquired through an FOI earlier this year and see the proliferation of Meth and how there were those who had to have known in the local anti-drug world what was going on but they stayed silent that a new strategy needs to be adopted to start saving our kids and part of that strategy might be getting more aggressive in the battle. And if you are going to get aggressive in that battle perhaps those who chose to sit on their hands while this crisis developed may well in my opinion not be part of the solution.

That is just my two cents and yup it is harsh but we are in a time of rising violent crime due to Meth and it is taking our kids at a rapid rate and a new strategy may well in my opinion entail new people with new ideas and approaches fighting it.

And if you do not believe I do not have some insight into this I encourage you to read the Meth in Moose Jaw series I wrote just about two years ago now when the MJPS did not seem able to say the word Meth publicly. Check it out by clicking here.

Do I know all about it? Not even close but what I did discover was shocking.