MF YYC Politics - there, I mega did it

[GGG]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

Always is a strong word in this statement.

Can you provide any examples of many businesses that haven’t seen their costs go up over the last few years?

A good example was Nenshi. I can’t find a source for his savings reworking process and cutting excess at city haul but I think it was in the 5% range.

Costs not going up is not the same as there is always room to be more efficient. So your ask and the claim made by curves are really the same thing.

Anyone claiming more than that 5% range of savings is probably wrong though. It’s not an unlimited well and risks just deferring things like maintenance and capital investment to provide short term savings

[para transit fellow]

Originally Posted by curves2000

There is ALWAYS fat and budgets to be trimmed and slashed. It doesn't matter if its corporations, private enterprise, household budgets and more. People always are able to actually reduce spending without drastically affecting results.

People would be amazed at how much costs can be taken out of a business or a government department without actually touching wages, benefits, headcount and more.

When people are incentivized, it's almost like magic things happen and all of a sudden everybody becomes frugal. There is always a fine balance between frugality and value but the notion that budgets should only go one way is usually reserved for government.

of course! that is obviously how the energy companies have been able to increase their profits while maintaining their workforce's headcount, wages and benefits...

Except this never happened. When business or the corporate world aggressively trims "fat," it is not to maintain the quality of the product/service ( or safety). Rather, cuts are made to "Increase Shareholder Value"

(and yes, quality suffers)

[curves2000]

Costs can always be taken out of a business, a government budget, a household budget, a personal budget and more. It happens every single day when people actually start to question things and are pressed to act on costs.

It's human nature, we abuse costs that are not directly paid by us. It's not science or magic that when pressed for cost reductions and efficiencies/ unlocking under utilized assets and looking for new suppliers and more.

It's not that corporations are ALWAYS better at cost reductions and holding the line on expenses, it's that they are incentivized to look for them a lot more than governments.

When nobody cares, you get crazy things happening that people don't bat an eye to. Anybody remember the federal government's $1000 tab for inflight lemon and limes on government aircraft?

https://nationalpost.com/news/govern...-catering-bill

Anybody really believe that on an annual basis, Air Canada and Westjet are spending over a billion a year to hand out garnish to Canadian travelers?

Read a management book a while ago, former CP rail, CN rail CEO Hunter Harrison. Was told by former management that costs couldn't really be trimmed at all, it was mostly done. He gave an example of how he went into the downtown Calgary offices and saw rows and rows of Fedex Boxes. When he inquired what was in the boxes, he was told it was new laptops to be delivered...........to SE Calgary. Gave the tech guy quite the lecture about how Fedex sends shipments to Memphis, Tennessee and than back up to Calgary. He couldn't believe the gravy train he ran into from a cost perspective.

Nobody is claiming you reduce transit and roads budget by 50%. I am sure there are several departments that can reduce costs, expenses and more by 10%+ along with finding more hidden value/efficiencies. I am not advocating for mass layoffs and significant salary/benefits reductions.

It's not just about being a little more frugal or being more value oriented, it's also bring prudent, logical, pragmatic and more. You don't need to write the Calgary Flames ownership a massive taxpayer funded chq for an arena to increase their overall wealth, income and asset value and then debate and debate and debate repairing a downtown Inglewood pool for $600k.

It's ok for expenses to go down and stay the same in a lot of categories, the sky will not fall.

[para transit fellow]

it's like talking to a shovel..

[Roughneck]

Originally Posted by curves2000

Nobody is claiming you reduce transit and roads budget by 50%.

Why not?

If a business were seeing major cost centres like that, they’d be incentivized to slash them as much as needed. If we want better from the government to be more like corporations at their super efficient cost cutting, surely everything should be on the table, otherwise you’re undermining the process of finding efficiencies.

Similarly, why not advocate for mass layoffs or significant remuneration reductions if that’s where the efficiencies are?

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Roughneck

Similarly, why not advocate for mass layoffs or significant remuneration reductions if that’s where the efficiencies are?

Depends how fat the employees are.

[Roughneck]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Depends how fat the employees are.

Fatter office workers will probably save on heating costs. But skinnier drivers will save on fuel costs. These are the pennies that turn into dollars, people!

[Wormius]

Some people would spend more money and resources looking for efficiencies than what any of them would actually save.

[Roughneck]

There’s nothing wrong in looking for efficiencies, but understanding that the reason governments don’t have the same incentives as corporations is because they’re providing services is important. Cutting government spending is easy. Cutting spending without changing services or changing priorities or changing goals is where most calls for cuts fall short. You start wondering if you’ll be able to cut 2% of an $8B budget by not buying pens and telling employees to go to banks or hotels to get some free ones because a management book said that’s what the Ryanair guy did to enforce a culture of frugality.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by GGG

A good example was Nenshi. I can’t find a source for his savings reworking process and cutting excess at city haul but I think it was in the 5% range.

Costs not going up is not the same as there is always room to be more efficient. So your ask and the claim made by curves are really the same thing.

Anyone claiming more than that 5% range of savings is probably wrong though. It’s not an unlimited well and risks just deferring things like maintenance and capital investment to provide short term savings

Nah I think most businesses that are growing expect their budgets to increase over time. The part of curves’ statement I had the biggest issue with was him implying that budgets going up shouldn’t be expected. That’s not an efficiency issue, it’s simply a reality.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

Nah I think most businesses that are growing expect their budgets to increase over time. The part of curves’ statement I had the biggest issue with was him implying that budgets going up shouldn’t be expected. That’s not an efficiency issue, it’s simply a reality.

I think you missed the point of his post entirely then if you thought it was about absolute budget rather than efficiency.

[Roughneck]

The city doesn’t grow efficiently so I’m not sure why we would expect the budget to increase efficiently.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by GGG

I think you missed the point of his post entirely then if you thought it was about absolute budget rather than efficiency.

I was responding to this:

Originally Posted by curves2000

When people are incentivized, it's almost like magic things happen and all of a sudden everybody becomes frugal. There is always a fine balance between frugality and value but the notion that budgets should only go one way is usually reserved for government.

I consider this to be a silly statement. Nobody believes in not trying to be economically efficient and even under the best of circumstances the budgets of successful businesses increase.

The rest of the post was essentially trying to sugar coat the lack of substance behind continually pretending there’s enough fat to be trimmed to significantly improve the budget without significantly affecting services. Basically if curves or councillor McLean don’t care that services may be negatively impacted I think they should just own it instead of trying to convince us that it’s not the case.

[curves2000]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

I was responding to this:



I consider this to be a silly statement. Nobody believes in not trying to be economically efficient and even under the best of circumstances the budgets of successful businesses increase.

The rest of the post was essentially trying to sugar coat the lack of substance behind continually pretending there’s enough fat to be trimmed to significantly improve the budget without significantly affecting services. Basically if curves or councillor McLean don’t care that services may be negatively impacted I think they should just own it instead of trying to convince us that it’s not the case.

Budget's don't always need to be fully spent! This isn't just a city hall thing, it goes with companies, businesses and personal finance. If you find you have saved extra savings, does this mean you always need to spend?

Holding the line on expenses as much as possible, increasing renew/replacement cycles on equipment within reason, consolidation of office space, selling under utilized assets, reviewing corporate and city policy on things and more. Sometimes items just aren't in the budget and the costs,
can't be justified. Sometimes the logical thing is to actually spend money on the capital side for renew, replace, upgrade and more in order to save it on the expense side. That can be an effective strategy for lowering expenses.

The spin off affect of having budgets that aren't managed properly is having to increase costs across the board in a multitude of places, not like the 3.6% increase in taxes they are referencing.

If you know Calgary's budget, you would know that the city is facing SIGNIFICANT budget concerns related to a whole host of major projects ranging from event center, Arts Commons, BMO Center, a drawdown of reserve funds and needing to spend a significant amount of money for massive wastewater upgrades. In life there are nice to have's and must have's and they need to be clearly defined.

https://www.sprawlcalgary.com/calgar...tre-sprawlcast

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...%241%20billion.

Balance sheet strength matters in finance but this notion that City of Calgary can't reasonably cut expenses in order to free up added capital for more urgent projects and high priority concerns is not rooted in reality.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by curves2000

Balance sheet strength matters in finance but this notion that City of Calgary can't reasonably cut expenses in order to free up added capital for more urgent projects and high priority concerns is not rooted in reality.

Give concrete, specific examples then that illustrate your point.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

I was responding to this:



I consider this to be a silly statement. Nobody believes in not trying to be economically efficient and even under the best of circumstances the budgets of successful businesses increase.

The rest of the post was essentially trying to sugar coat the lack of substance behind continually pretending there’s enough fat to be trimmed to significantly improve the budget without significantly affecting services. Basically if curves or councillor McLean don’t care that services may be negatively impacted I think they should just own it instead of trying to convince us that it’s not the case.

There’s an implied per capita and inflation in there.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Give concrete, specific examples then that illustrate your point.

Did you know we pay a Poet Laureate $5k a year? That seems like an easy win, and should fill at least 10 potholes.



Simple stuff, Pepsi. We can crowdsource this project for the city, call it CPOGE, Calgary Puck Office of Government Efficiency. No pay, 80 hours of hardcore work a week.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by curves2000

If you know Calgary's budget, you would know that the city is facing SIGNIFICANT budget concerns related to a whole host of major projects ranging from event center, Arts Commons, BMO Center, a drawdown of reserve funds and needing to spend a significant amount of money for massive wastewater upgrades. In life there are nice to have's and must have's and they need to be clearly defined.

Sure. But the "nice to haves" aren't waste. If you don't have "nice to haves" you have a s***hole.

Low taxes don't make a place nice. If you believe they do, move to Somalia. It's the libertarian fantasy taken to its maximum.

[topfiverecords]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Did you know we pay a Poet Laureate $5k a year? That seems like an easy win, and should fill at least 10 potholes.



Simple stuff, Pepsi. We can crowdsource this project for the city, call it CPOGE, Calgary Puck Office of Government Efficiency. No pay, 80 hours of hardcore work a week.

OOoh. I'm gettin me some CPOGE crypto to add to my huge portfolio.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by curves2000

Budget's don't always need to be fully spent! This isn't just a city hall thing, it goes with companies, businesses and personal finance. If you find you have saved extra savings, does this mean you always need to spend?

Holding the line on expenses as much as possible, increasing renew/replacement cycles on equipment within reason, consolidation of office space, selling under utilized assets, reviewing corporate and city policy on things and more. Sometimes items just aren't in the budget and the costs,
can't be justified. Sometimes the logical thing is to actually spend money on the capital side for renew, replace, upgrade and more in order to save it on the expense side. That can be an effective strategy for lowering expenses.

The spin off affect of having budgets that aren't managed properly is having to increase costs across the board in a multitude of places, not like the 3.6% increase in taxes they are referencing.

If you know Calgary's budget, you would know that the city is facing SIGNIFICANT budget concerns related to a whole host of major projects ranging from event center, Arts Commons, BMO Center, a drawdown of reserve funds and needing to spend a significant amount of money for massive wastewater upgrades. In life there are nice to have's and must have's and they need to be clearly defined.

https://www.sprawlcalgary.com/calgar...tre-sprawlcast

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...%241%20billion.

Balance sheet strength matters in finance but this notion that City of Calgary can't reasonably cut expenses in order to free up added capital for more urgent projects and high priority concerns is not rooted in reality.

No one is saying that they can’t find any ways to save money, it’s when you imply that there is enough savings available to not have a significant impact on the services provided and that it’s not a reasonable expectation for budgets in growing municipalities or businesses to increase where you’re entering a fantasy world.

The vagueness of your hypothetical scenario examples and rhetorical questions don’t help. “If you save money does that mean you have to spend it?”. Obviously the answer is no you don’t have to do anything with that money, but that doesn’t mean there may not be consequences to that decision.

Originally Posted by GGG

There’s an implied per capita and inflation in there.

Look GGG I know you enjoy playing devil’s advocate but you know curves’ schtick by this point. Pointing out that you can find savings isn’t an issue, pointing it out while acting as though there won’t be an impact, while plausible, isn’t likely and comes off as a similar argument to trickle down economics. Plausible but unlikely and certainly not a guaranteed outcome.

It should be readily apparent to anyone based on how curves started going off on this tangent in response to what was basically a sarcastic fat joke directed at a councillor that he’s just driving a narrative and not really engaging in a good faith discussion. As he typically does. I like hearing different perspectives, especially from someone who based on their posting history may in fact be the most interesting person in the world, but I don’t like bull#### arguments that are clearly made in bad faith.