This morning's budget kickoff started with a bit of multicultural flair. At the beginning of the meeting, downtown Councillor Bob Bratina surprised everyone by welcoming a group of Chinese delegates in Mandarin. Bratina gave me this translation of his greeting: "Welcome to Chinese friends. We Canadians appreciate the Chinese culture. Thank you very much."
After Bratina's linguistic manoeuvre, Mayor Fred Eisenberger asked Rob Rossini, the city's finance guru, if the budget was going to be presented in Chinese. That prompted Rossini to launch into the first few lines of his budget presentation in robust Italian. He got a big laugh from council, including Eisenberger.
"You make the budget sound so sexy," said the Mayor. "I'm getting a little hot under the collar."
I'm filing that comment away in the "too much information" pile.
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On a more serious note, the preliminary budget numbers were presented to council this morning. So far, they're better than expected - Hamilton's looking at a 3.1 per cent property tax increase. However, that amount assumes we're getting a $16.5 million contribution from the province. More details about the budget will be available in tomorrow's paper.
In the meantime, what's your reaction to these numbers?
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