While many are thinking of the holiday season, which is quickly closing in on us, those at our municipal offices are starting to focus on another season.

Yes, it’s beginning to look a lot like... budget time.

It’s always an interesting time of year for taxpayers as well, as the outcome of deliberations directly affects all of us. So it only seems logical that we should all have the opportunity to be involved.

While we’re not talking about having the power to tell bureaucrats where they should buy paper, each municipality has the responsibility to ensure the process is as open as it can be.

Both Muskoka Lakes and Bracebridge present draft budgets to constituents, thereby giving them a chance to look it over and raise any concerns. The budget is then deliberated in a public forum.

But despite an uproar over the process last year, and a request for a more open, public process this year, Gravenhurst councillors refuse to change their minds to facilitate that.

Councillor Lou Guerriero says people had their say during the public meetings for the town’s strategic plan, which helps to form the budget. That is a far cry from presenting a draft budget to the public, allowing for input on the draft, and then having an open debate.

But to talk behind closed doors, and rubber stamp arguably the most important document council produces each year, is not a public process.

Throughout the 2006 municipal election, many elected officials who currently sit on council promised more transparency at town hall.

In his inaugural speech in December 2006, Mayor John Klinck was quoted as promising to “develop a budget process for 2007 that is clear, concise and formatted to facilitate both public review and understanding before adoption.” However that wasn’t done for the 2007 budget. And last year at budget time Klinck was quoted as saying “…there’s no question that we need to work ourselves toward a process that allows for input, and that is fully what we intend to do after council adopts the community-driven strategic plan.”

Perhaps what Klinck didn’t make clear to people was that he obviously meant the strategic plan was the community’s opportunity to make comment on a budget that hadn’t even been drawn up yet.

The talks for the 2008 budget will be interesting to watch in Gravenhurst, Bracebridge and Muskoka Lakes.

After much turmoil lately in Muskoka Lakes, that council will be going through the process with a new acting chief administrative officer and a new treasurer. In Bracebridge, this will be the first budget deliberations with its new CAO John Sisson.

And while there will likely be some changes to the procedure, as these new hires find their way, one process that shouldn’t be tampered with is the one that involves the public.

KF