I was flabbergasted to read “Proposed Vancouver budget includes 5 new taxes and job cuts as city faces $43 million deficit” (The Columbian, Oct. 8).
How does a city incur a deficit of that size without doing anything to mitigate it before it gets that big? It didn’t happen just since last year, so what was done to reduce the impact before now? It’s incomprehensible that the city’s budget projections didn’t see this coming. It certainly looks like the keepers of the public funds have been asleep at the wheel for more than just a year.
This level of mismanagement should not be permitted with all the advanced tools available to predict economic realities before a crisis comes. Who’s accountable?
