Council scales back budget

Monday evening concluded council's process of scaling back the city of North Bay's infrastructure spending.

While this year's upcoming budget will be nearly identical to last year's approximately 22 million dollar layout, the proposed inflationary growth portion of next year's was removed during Monday evening's City Council meeting.

Weeks prior to the meeting, council was sure to check the projects that would be put aside as not to put off residents with the reduction in spending.
The one million dollar reduction seen in the 2013 budget will result in a 1.36 percent decrease in local tax bills.

Councillor Dave Mendicino pointed out that the city has had a long period of positive growth and expansion and he and his fellow councillors feel now is a good time to lay off tax increases and to reassess priorities and necessities before going forward with growth plans.

“I really believe that now is the time to take a little breather and look to see what we're doing,” says Mendicino.

This should allow local residents some small relief this year on their tax bills and give the city a chance to stretch the value and needs in its budget to a real world test.

Again, Councillor Mendincio pointed out the enormous 735 million in building permits since 2004 that proves the city is indeed building at quite a pace.

However, doing the math at the 22 million a year over 8 years since 2004 really only points to 172 million roughly spent on the city's Capital Budget over this period, indicating that perhaps hospital and stimulus funding is skewing the financials to a large degree.

This process was designed for the city's long term Capital Budget process so that they could identify where they will be getting their money's from and how they will be spending it in the next year.

“This isn't a reduction in spending,” says Deputy Mayor Sean Lawlor, “it's holding off on a scheduled increase of a million dollars, and I should say that will be 1.36 percent less on taxes.”

Undoubtedly, the Budget and taxes will continue to be a topic of conversation in North Bay as major employers in the rail and mining industries shutter their facilities, and the community finds employment more difficult to replace.