01-10-2019, 11:19 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-10-2019, 11:22 PM by danbrotherston.)
The regional budget is out in a survey, and it's kind of the opposite of Kitchener's in terms of cycling.
It mentions active transportation in one of the survey questions (https://www.engagewr.ca/2019-budget),
where it asks if $0.44 increase in the active transportation budget is good value (for the record, the Cycle WR pledge was $13 from the region--I don't know what the current budget is...). I didn't know how to answer that, it's better than 0, but, like, barely.
And frankly, I cannot even find mention of active transportation whatsoever the budget issue papers (https://www.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/regio...Papers.pdf) or the full budget (https://www.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/regio...t_Book.pdf) although I think that's because the region doesn't bother to split it out.
This is a lack of leadership and care from the region council and staff. It's so frustrating, because Kitchener seems poised to do great things, but I have serious doubts whether they will succeed with dangerous roads crisscrossing the city that they cannot fix.
It's incredibly disappointing to see the region, fail--again--to address these issues. A governments priorities are found in the budget, and there is no priority here.
As a more general point, I found the Kitchener budget presentation to be far easier to follow and understand than the Region's...hell, like I said, I cannot even find reference to one of the things they asked in the survey, I have no idea what they intend to spend the ~250k they're proposing for active transportation region wide on.
It mentions active transportation in one of the survey questions (https://www.engagewr.ca/2019-budget),
where it asks if $0.44 increase in the active transportation budget is good value (for the record, the Cycle WR pledge was $13 from the region--I don't know what the current budget is...). I didn't know how to answer that, it's better than 0, but, like, barely.
And frankly, I cannot even find mention of active transportation whatsoever the budget issue papers (https://www.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/regio...Papers.pdf) or the full budget (https://www.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/regio...t_Book.pdf) although I think that's because the region doesn't bother to split it out.
This is a lack of leadership and care from the region council and staff. It's so frustrating, because Kitchener seems poised to do great things, but I have serious doubts whether they will succeed with dangerous roads crisscrossing the city that they cannot fix.
It's incredibly disappointing to see the region, fail--again--to address these issues. A governments priorities are found in the budget, and there is no priority here.
As a more general point, I found the Kitchener budget presentation to be far easier to follow and understand than the Region's...hell, like I said, I cannot even find reference to one of the things they asked in the survey, I have no idea what they intend to spend the ~250k they're proposing for active transportation region wide on.