After hours of budget deliberations, council approved a tax increase of 2.05 per cent, Tuesday, as well as an increase of 15 per cent for water rates, 5.2 per cent for sewage rates and four per cent for solid waste fees.
The tax increase is down more than four percentage points from the 6.38 that was proposed when the 2014 operating budget was presented in December.
Making up the reduction, which amounts to $277,514, are cuts made by administration, as well as council.
Included in council’s cuts is the $50,000 that was earmarked for an administrative assistant for the municipality’s chief administrative officer. The rationale for cutting the position and the funds—despite the fact that the CAO admitted he could use the help—was that there is nowhere to put such a person, as all of the activity centre’s existing office space is occupied.
Another cut, in the amount of $25,000, was the result of the creation of a reserve for contracted services for snow removal. That reserve, which council created in order to ensure enough money is available for snow removal in a year with an above average snowfall, is made up of the unexpended budget funds from the contracted services line in 2013. Having that fund in place allows the municipality to budget more conservatively, so the contracted services line for 2014 decreased to $150,000 from the originally budgeted $175,000.
(The reserve will begin with $50,000—$48,000 of which is unexpended funds from last year—and will have a maximum of $60,000.)
Council’s other reductions include a reduction in the budgeted amount for the joint land use and planning study, leaving only the $15,000 that is needed for the first phase of the project and a small contingency that could allow for the second phase to start. (To learn more about that study and its funding, see the Feb. 27 issue of the Fitzhugh.)
Council’s final cut was the result of the creation of another reserve fund, which allows the municipality to carry forward unexpended funds budgeted for the economic development, community development and cultural development funds. That way, each year those funds only need to be topped up when organizations in town are granted money from them.
Making up the remainder of the reductions are cuts from administration. Those include $60,000 from the environmental services budget, $50,000 for a maintenance position and $10,000 for hosting a delegation from Hakone, Japan. That visit has been postponed until 2015.
The $60,000 was an amount Bruce Thompson, the town’s operations director, identified, when he realized the project it was earmarked for was already completed. It was also Thompson who decided to forgo the additional maintenance position, reducing the budget by another $50,000.
Following the final budget talks, which took council until 5 p.m. Tuesday evening, councillors breathed a collective sigh of relief.
“I just heard violins and angels singing,” joked Coun. Rico Damota, after Alice Lettner, the town’s director of finance, announced that the tax increase was 2.05 per cent.
After many hours of deliberations, both on Tuesday and in previous weeks, Mayor Richard Ireland said he felt what council achieved was “admirable.”
“Starting at 6.38 per cent and getting us down [to 2.05 per cent] through really long, detailed discussions has served the public interest.
“This is exactly what we’re here to do: hash these things out, and we did that.”
Although the consensus was that council and administration did a good job of reducing the final tax increase, Coun. Gilbert Wall reminded the group that—without the substantial savings the municipality realized on its utility costs—the increase actually accounts for much more.
“Even though we got this to 2.05 per cent, the hard reality is we are asking for about six per cent from our taxpayers. We got a big cushion in our utilities and we also have a more realistic ask on our operations side in the areas that we do cost recovery on—[water, sewer and solid waste].
“So we’re still asking for a substantial amount from our taxpayers even at 2.05 per cent.”
Nicole Veerman
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