Mayor Al McDonald and members of City Council, seen here during last week's budget meeting, couldn't find any more savings for the 2015 budget after a two hour meeting on Thursday night. The politicians will have one more chance to bring their ideas forward on March 4. PHOTO BY LIAM BERTI
Like any other rollercoaster ride, City Council started the third installment of their emergency budget meetings with high hopes. But after some ups and downs, twists and turns, they ended up right where they began.
After two other progressive sessions brought the proposed tax levy increase down to 2.86 per cent from 5.88 per cent, councillors were given one more chance to bring cost-cutting ideas to the table on Thursday night.
But after two hours of deliberations, no progress was made.
The city’s chief administrative officer, Jerry Knox, did have the opportunity to present the proposed $2.2 million capital budget cuts and the projects that are likely to be impacted by the pullbacks though.
While only $1.2 million of that would come directly from the city’s pay-as-you-go project spending, it would still defer projects like the Chippewa Creek and Airport Heights Stormwater Retention program, the Waterfront Rehab program, and the King’s Landing and Marina Rehab program, among many others.
Council did previously approve the reduced spending, but Coun. Mac Bain said he is concerned about the message the city is sending to the provincial government by continuing to cut back and postpone their capital infrastructure spending despite asking for additional funding.
“Any time they gave us stable, reliable funding, they wanted us to increase and spend more money on capital, and we are not doing that,” said Bain.
“So the province isn’t going to be happy,” he continued. “The province isn’t going to look at us and say ‘you did the right thing,’ and then we are going to compound it by reducing the amount of capital that we are going to actually do.”
Council did, however, vote against reducing the capital spending by another $1 million, as suggested by Coun. Derek Shogren. Knox said additional funds could be found in reducing road-resurfacing projects, but that proposal was ultimately turned down.
There was serious concern for merely postponing the tax burden for future years if some of the capital projects don’t get completed.
“If we cut any more out of the capital, that’s just more tax burden we are going to put on the backs of the same people we are trying to protect at this exact moment,” said Coun. Jeff Serran. “Sure it’s saving us time and we are saving money for the taxpayer this year, but we are putting it on their backs in future years because eventually this stuff is going to have to get done."
For more on the previous meetings, click here: http://goo.gl/5lWQRL
On the operating side of the budget, councillors Mike Anthony and Shogren were the only ones to bring new ideas forward on Thursday.
The most hotly contested was increasing the use of the city’s tax rate stabilization fund for one-time relief.
The idea was originally put forward last week by Coun. Daryl Vaillancourt, but even he had a change of heart, preferring instead to not use the money at all and looking elsewhere for the savings.
“If it was the last $390,000 that we had, would we be so quick to spend it?” he said. “It’s a false positive; it’s not a real saving.”
Others, like George Maroosis and Mark King, remained in favour of the discretionary spending, arguing that that account exists for the purpose of leveling out the big budget years.
“It’s like putting money under your mattress and starving to death,” said Maroosis.
In the end, no new consensus was reached and the group decided to go back to the original one-time relief payment of $390,000, roughly 0.5 per cent of the overall budget increase.
Shogren also suggested increasing Knox’s target savings by an additional $50,000 after council’s consensus last meeting was to assign a hard-target of $200,000 to find throughout the year. But those in attendance on Thursday voted to keep the savings target at $200,000.
When it was first discussed, Knox said those savings could come from areas like staff overtime and attrition through retirement.
After King asked Knox if he felt he could cut the extra $50,000 on Thursday, the CAO said, “are you prepared for the pain?”
If given the go-ahead to find more savings, he would likely turn to noticeable service level reductions that the councillors would bear the brunt of.
Some of the potential cuts he casually mentioned during the meeting included eliminating overtime in sidewalk snow removal and not plowing one side of the roads where possible, to name just a few.
On the request of deputy mayor and budget chief Sheldon Forgette, council was also given a forecasted estimate on the levy increases for the rest of their term.
The city's chief financial officer, Margaret Karpenko, said the forecasted levy increases beyond this year are predicted to be 4.91 per cent, 4.78 per cent and 4.37 per cent in 2016, 2017 and 2018, respectively.
As some members of council touched on though, those numbers rely on a list of different variables that could change and don't mean much at this point.
In what has proven to be the busiest budget process ever, McDonald has called one final meeting on March 4, since council has so far been unable to drive the levy down as low as some said they wanted.
CAO Knox reiterated that no more ideas will come forward from the city and that any proposed changes will come entirely from those around the council table.
McDonald said he can’t remember there ever being a defeated budget and that he still has some concern that the minimum six supporting votes won’t be there come the looming March 16 deadline.
