Friday 18 July 2014

Pension Woes Continue for City Manager

Happy weekend everyone!!

A quick post today to let everyone know that something big is happening at the City of Regina, and I for one am stoked to see this finally happening. 

http://www.leaderpost.com/news/regina/FCAA+considers+cancelling+City+Regina+pension+plan/10041586/story.html

http://www.leaderpost.com/news/regina/FCAA+considers+cancelling+City+Regina+pension+plan/10041586/story.html

The only question is: Will this begin a full-blown audit and/or investigation into the goings on at City Hall? The $300M Pension Deficit was supposed to be fixed by December 2012, at least according to then-Mayoral-hopeful Michael Fougere during the 2012 Municipal Election. The City has been operating the Pension Plan illegally for over 3 years now, and it appears the Government of Saskatchewan isn't going to let that happen for much longer. It would appear that they, too, believed the lies that Mayor Fougere told the public during the election.

There are many questions that arise from this, the least of which is: How can we trust the City Manager, or any of the Senior Management team at the City of Regina, to manage the multi-million dollar stadium project when they failed miserably at fixing this issue? How can we trust them not to bankrupt our City? How can we trust them when they are failing their own employees who entrusted them to manage their retirement funds properly?

Most importantly: How did we get into this deficit? Mayor Fougere (or former Mayor Fiacco) would lead you to believe it is because of the market woes. Yet, we are alone in this kind of massive problem. In fact, as per the article, "such a situation of non-compliance is “unprecedented” in Saskatchewan." How is that possible? Well, according to some on the inside, there was a massive "retirement" package offered to about 400 City Employees in 2007 at the Turvey Centre. What lead to this is something that needs to be investigated, but rumour has it that this was one of the ways to "silence" the critics of Fiacco at the time, while allowing Fiacco to pad the Administration with the "yes men" that wouldn't question anything he does.

And, well, if you look at all that's happened since then, it certainly makes you wonder. 

Since then, Fiacco's managed to get his dear Harbour Landing and Global Transportation Hub developed, which has conveniently lead to the development of Harbour Landing West (Devonia Park) in the coming months, where Fiacco and several business partners own(ed) land.

During those years, land prices also skyrocketed over 300%

If this isn't enough reason to get an audit going, I don't know what would be. If the Wall Government feels it's appropriate to investigate the land transactions happening in the RM of Sherwood, where Reeve Eberle owns land, this should be raising red flags all over. The only problem is, not enough people are calling and demanding action be taken.

So, what can you do to get this looked further into? Simple!

CALL THE PREMIER'S OFFICE!! CALL YOUR MLA!!! CALL THE MINISTER OF GOVERNMENT RELATIONS JIM REITER. DEMAND THEY TAKE ACTION!!