Tonight, Caledon Community Services (CCS) will hold its first board meeting of the new year still a few thousand dollars short of its fund raising objectives. Executive Director Monty Laskin will quickly tell you it’s been a tough year. When you’re up to your neck in the social service needs of a community in tougher times and short a few thousand dollars, some sleepless nights follow.

Caledon’s Council is in the midst of its own challenging questions too. Given the slowly waning recession, like CCS, you can ask the fairy godmother for balanced books. But, in their heart of hearts, the Councillors know that raising taxes and trimming municipal services are the only viable options.

The higher up the tax chain you travel, the more zeroes you find after the numbers by which the dilemmas are measured. Dalton McGuinty knows that in spades, one of the reasons he shuffled his cabinet, adding some “rookies”, as if a little political cosmetic touch-up might ease the pain. It won’t!

Ontario is $25 billion in the hole because income, sales and corporate tax revenues tanked during the recession while the Province kept spending as if the fairy godmother would make the danger warnings go poof. Ontario’s tired looking Liberal governors know they missed or ignored the markers of looming troubles two years ago, and that their oversights will carry a political price. Some astoundingly stupid spending scandals haven’t helped either.

And then the Ottawa gang figured the best way to avoid embarrassment was to prorogue Parliament until the scent of spring was in the air, hoping everyone would forget some of the issues King Stephen the First would prefer we’d ignore. We’re “recalibrating”, the Prime Minister says. You’d hope so, in the face of a whopping $170 billion deficit over the next 60 months. That’s enough money to run Ontario for more than a year, Caledon for a few centuries and the Town’s community services organization until the year 8810.

Mr. Harper promises to balance the Federal budget within the foreseeable future. To keep that promise, the Feds have  the same options as the Town and the Province, cutting expenses and raising taxes. The knives are in the hands of his trusted Finance Minister and the newly minted, one time new “sheriff in town” – Stockwell Day. King Stephen’s kind words: “I suspect the provinces will have to make some of the same difficult decisions we are making, and to control their spending in the years in the future.”

Yikes! After the pain comes more pain.

Now, here’s the gist of all this. Watch for it, everyone spinning to save their political skin. Mr. Harper will blame the Americans for his financial mess. Mr. McGuinty will blame the Feds for cutting back on Ontario’s due. Towns and cities will blame the austerity measures of the Province, leaving CCS?and others holding a larger tin cup, hoping the generosity of afflicted citizens can make up the shortfalls their organizations require to complete vital work.