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Letters: ‘Not onerous at all' to check Pitt Meadows books

Bookkeeper says that line-by-line accounting of city expenses easy

Editor, The News:

Re: Pitt scrutiny scrutinized (The News, July 29).

Thank you to Couns. Janis Elkerton and Bruce Bell and the rest of Mayor John Becker’s team for standing by their promise of a zero per cent tax increase and continuing to mitigate fiscal responsibility by requesting scrutiny of all city hall and council expenditures.

I am a bookkeeper and have to agree with Coun. Mike Stark in his findings from the city finance department that keeping track of expenses line by line as to an amount, description, and who received the funds is not the least bit onerous.

That is why there are general ledger codes and computers.

Transparency to the taxpayers and saving every penny is simply doing due diligence.

I was once in a business meeting for a large company and we were asked if we could think of any ways to save money. One idea I had was to quit buying donuts for the large group meetings. After checking the records, a rough estimate was six times per month at $50 on each occasion equating to $3,600 per year.

There was another service provided at $200 per month that I proved was completely unnecessary and which was cancelled at another savings of $2,400 per year.

There were many other suggestions, some implemented, some not. But reviewing the ‘bottom line’ saved the company thousands of dollars per year.

As for Coun. Tracy Miyashita to suggest this issue is about trusting city staff, it is not. It is about research, evaluation, analysis, and validation of a lot of small amounts that eventually became $2.4 million dollars of taxpayers money.

Sometimes a little fishing can net some pretty big fish.

Patricia Tochkin

Pitt Meadows