Council sees 2013 budget pass with much fanfare

North Bay City Council, after the longest deliberations anyone can remember, finally passed its 2013 budget this week.

The budget will see a tax levy increase of 1.77 %, helping to fund the 114 million dollar operating budget the city has adopted.

Deputy Mayor Sean Lawlor says that for the average resident, this will mean an increase in taxes of approximately zero to 100 dollars within the coming year.

“I realize that’s a bit of a spread but most residents are going to see an impact in that range,” says Lawlor.

The city has been in extensive contract negotiations as well as looking at cost control measures and efficiencies to keep the budget increase as low as possible.

“It’s certainly the idea that I’ve had all along,” says Deputy Mayor Sean Lawlor, “that is, we’ve got to be looking for way of reducing city spending to bring it down more in line with what residents can afford.”

“I think it’s a step in the right direction and I’m looking forward to next year’s budget as well,” Lawlor says.

This year has seen the appearance of the North Bay Ratepayers Association, a group dedicated to reminding council that the costs of living and doing business in North Bay are being suffocated by high taxes in a market that has been less than vigorous for some period of time.

“It’s what I call a great corporate budget”, says Mark King, President of the Ratepayers Association.

“It was designed basically, in my mind, to appease staff and employees,” says King, adding “they go home with a 2% increase but the question is what about those provincial employees that have had their wages frozen for the next 2 years?”

“We know that we have the lowest family income in this particular city, which is a huge, huge issue, and they’re going to have to figure out how to find money to make that lack of increase up and it bothers me to see that happen,” King says.

With the lowest tax levy increase seen in the city in ten years, North Bay Mayor Al McDonald says that council and staff worked extremely hard during the long and difficult budget process to get it to that point.

“At the end of the day, I think that we got it as low as we possibly could” says McDonald.

“Finding savings and efficiencies shouldn’t just be at budget time, it should be every day of the week so that’s one of the things that I was asking council and staff, that we have to find ways of how to deliver our services more efficiently,” he says.

Depending on which numbers you look at and how much validity you put into them, the fact remains that the economy has been struggling around the globe, throughout the country and province.

North Bay is no different, seeing major downturns in local employment opportunities, for example, the ONTC divestment and rapid slowdowns within the mining sector, it is increasingly difficult to get by for residents who are retired or in the business and service industries relying on a public that are less economically well off.

The city has recently been able to provide strong rates of pay increases to its major service providers and with the economic slowdown now extending well past the five year point, residents have felt the deep pinch of taxation has gone as far as they are able to provide.

At the same time, the Mayor and Council know that residents want all the quality of life services in their city yet are pressed to provide them without turning facilities such as ball fields into a city run, pay as you go business.
The other major point of frustration again seems to be roads maintenance as springs arrives, we are all too aware that the infrastructure needs heavy repairs.

Certainly politicians and local ratepayers must feel this never ending cycle of patching is in the least, exhausting if only a more durable way of surfacing the roads was available.

Finally, the city will see the summer of 2013 with its major reconstruction of the Gardens approach with much anticipation and in trepidation as to what the future will hold for the municipality as it hopefully uses this major expansion to spring board into a positive economic environment.