Editorial - Where’s The Beef Or The Missing Tax Arrears???

Editorial Comment

For many Council watchers last Monday afternoon’s regular meeting of Moose Jaw Council the big issue wasn’t what was in the meeting but rather what was seemingly missing.

At last Monday’s Council meeting the city departments’ quarterly reports until June 30th, 2024 were presented.

Noticeably absent from the meeting were the usual Quarterly Reports about the financial conditions the City is experiencing.

Usually both the department quarterly reports and the City Quarterly Reports are presented at the same time. But for some unknown reason the last Council meeting in August 2024 didn’t generate the reports.

Now we are not saying there is some sort of conspiracy going on.

But presenting more information in one big information dump has been something that is not to the liking of the local media.

The philosophy behind the feeling is so much information dumped all at one time means there is no way to reasonably cover it all.

The media and the public are hit with a tidal wave of facts and figures it’s almost impossible to wade through properly.

It’s the same thing done at budget time.

The documents and figures are all there but the problem is they are dumped with very little time to read, analyze and digest. It seems quite often there is only a couple of days to review hundreds of pages.

If the City Quarterly reports were delayed as a service to the public and the media which helps keep City Hall accountable great.

If it was for some other reason such as the continual computer system upgrade problems - so far costing $2 million in upgrades and the system is far from fully operational - it’s not so great.

With all of that said the Quarterly Reports yet to be made public contain an important chart in them and that is the tax arrears owing as of June 30, 2024.

These are bell weather figures as they indicate fully how much in property taxes haven’t been paid on the final due date of June 30th annually (on most normal years).

All 2024 property taxes outstanding as of June 30th are hit with late payment charges which is a key indicator of the overall local economy.

Given this is an election year, and Council runs on their record, it’s key to release these numbers as soon as possible.

There may be decent and good candidates for Council determining if they are going to run and the ability of people to pay their property taxes is always a hot button topic.

The sooner the full Quarterly Reports are released the better.

As another aside during the Department Quarterly Reports that we released there was one key figure missing from Administration to present their department’s report.

The last time this happened was when Jim Dixon was silently “retired” from running the economic development department.

The rumour mill is churning that another department head was axed and as such was not at last Monday’s meeting.

These are developments we will have to wait and see what happens.