Stephen Chase stands up for taxpayers in pension meeting

Tuesday night was another busy night for city council. Several steps were taken to move towards a solution to the city’s pension problems.

Not sure what’s going on? Let’s just say that this pension problem will cost us (the taxpayers) $19 million dollars by the end of this year. A previous council deal saw the employees contribute more out of their paychecks; however, this only put a million dollar dent in the figure.

While the city is looking to work out a solution with the employee union’s, it was councillor Stephen Chase who made the motion to hire an expert to look at the financial implications of changes to the plan. Chase said not getting expert advice would be a “dereliction of council’s responsibility and an abandonment of the taxpayers.”

But changing the plan isn’t easy - it is currently a very time consuming process for council to make any changes. The proposed motion would mean that council would have the ability to make changes to the plan when required (while still being bound by the Income Tax Act). This motion was strongly supported by Stephen Chase, a councillor who is looking out for us - the taxpayers.

All I can say is that I’m glad that there is a person on city council who is looking out for us. And it’s not just this pension issue, he’s looking our for us on transparency, tax increases, wasteful spending, good governance, and much more. I just wish there were more councillors like him, imagine what the city could do with an extra $19 million dollars!