A right-wing website is condemning public spending in Flin Flon, but officials maintain every dollar is doled out responsibly.
“The vast majority of readers have never likely even heard of Flin Flon but its obscurity certainly doesn’t deter it from spending like a major metropolis,” columnist Tom Barak writes on Canada Free Press.
Barak begins his July 17 column, titled “The Education Racket in Manitoba,” by criticizing the Flin Flon school board’s recent decision to give teachers a 9.32 per cent pay increase over four years.
“And tragically, this little school division is indicative of a Canada-wide public education system that is bleeding taxpayers dry while short-changing students,” he writes.
Barak bolsters his argument by pointing to research demonstrating that “ballooning teacher salaries are having no improving affect on student performance” in Canada.
Financial report
He then picks apart the City of Flin Flon’s 2012 annual financial report – the most recent one he could find – showing that the municipality was “awash in long-term debt” of more than $10.8 million.
Barak condemns as too high the salaries of some municipal employees and sounds alarm over the unfunded liability of the pension plan to which most of them belong.
Mayor George Fontaine had not read Barak’s article but said the city treats every tax dollar with respect.
“We do spend our money responsibly and we wish we didn’t have to spend some of the money we spend,” he said.
The Reminder could not reach an official from the Flin Flon school division for comment, but both trustees and administration have in the past publicly defended their spending policies.
Errors
In his column, Barak makes some factual errors.
For one, he writes that teachers are city employees when they in fact work for the school division.
He also writes that the city “slurped up” over $14.3 million in municipal revenue and government grants in 2012, but that was merely a budgetary estimate.
The actual figure that year was $20.67 million, of which only $13.43 million was spent, the document Barak references reveals.
Canada Free Press espouses many right-leaning views. The site’s slogan: “Because without America there is no Free World.”
