It is Saturday morning, and I am dicing celery and carrots. Not because I particularly enjoy dicing celery and carrots. I am doing it for Tuesday Victoria.
Saturday Victoria has a little time. Tuesday Victoria will be back at work, staring at a fiscal 2027 budget, wondering what happened to the weekend and trying to figure out what to make for dinner. So Saturday Victoria is making freezer cubes. Celery. Carrots. Into the freezer. When Tuesday comes, add onions and I have mirepoix without starting from scratch.
Cooking economy.
Which, naturally, got me thinking about condominium budgets. Because apparently I cannot chop a vegetable without turning it into a management philosophy.
Earlier, I had been telling Randy about going into a store because my foundation is coming to the end of its useful life. Given the current political and economic climate — elbows up, buy Canadian, support Canadian businesses — I asked what Canadian cosmetic companies I should look at. I expected options. Instead, I was surprised by how difficult the question seemed to be.
Not because there aren’t alternatives. Because nobody had prepared the alternatives.
Back to the celery.
We do something remarkably similar when budgeting. A contract comes up for renewal. Landscaping and snow clearing cost X last year. The new proposal costs Y. And suddenly the discussion becomes: Can we afford Y?
That is a perfectly reasonable question. It just isn’t the first one I want to ask anymore.
I want to put the contract on the cutting board.
What exactly are we buying? How much is grass cutting? Garden maintenance? Spring cleanup? Fall cleanup? Snow plowing? Sidewalk clearing? Salting? On-call service? Labour? Materials? Equipment?
What happens if one company does all of it? What happens if they don’t? What can be separated? What should stay together? What are we paying for convenience? What are we paying because somebody years ago bundled these things into one contract and nobody has thought to unbundle them since?
In other words, before deciding whether the total is reasonable, understand the sum of its parts.
It is the difference between using a shortcut and doing the long division. Shortcuts are useful when you already understand the equation. They are considerably less useful when you don’t.
There are good reasons to put services together. There are efficiencies in mobilization, administration and accountability. One contractor can mean one phone call, one invoice and one throat to choke when something goes wrong.
But there is also a risk in putting every egg in one basket. You stop seeing what each egg costs.
That is the exercise I am bringing to our fiscal 2027 budget. Not simply: What did we spend last year, and how much more will it cost next year? Instead: What are we actually trying to accomplish, what are the component parts, and what is the smartest way to buy them?
Maybe the answer ultimately is one contractor. Fine. But then we will have arrived there because the pieces told us it was the best answer — not because that was how the line appeared in last year’s budget.
That distinction matters.
Budgets have a funny way of turning yesterday’s decisions into tomorrow’s assumptions. A number gets carried forward. A contract gets renewed. A category gets increased by three or five or eight per cent. Eventually nobody remembers why the number exists in the first place.
And that is where alternative thinking becomes important.
Before you need an alternative, know what the alternatives are.
The cosmetics counter should know the Canadian brands before somebody walks in asking for them. A condominium board should understand the pieces of a major operating expense before the renewal lands on the agenda. And Tuesday Victoria should not have to dice celery.
That is what Saturday Victoria is for.
There is probably a larger management lesson hiding in my freezer tray. Planning ahead isn’t predicting the future. It is doing enough work today that, when circumstances change, tomorrow has options.
Eight little cubes at a time.