Everyone understands municipalities operate on a different schedule when it comes to budgets, but taking nearly four months to come to grips with approving this year’s town budget has gotten to be just a bit much.
Okay, so they hired a new chief administrative officer who has introduced the town to a different way of budgeting – a three year cycle that also includes a 10 year capital plan. They can be forgiven a bit for that.
However, toss in special public budget meetings to show them how it is different and other meetings where it seems there is more interest in arguing over previously decided issues that determining what should be done with the $880,000 surplus, and you have what can only be called “confusion and delay”.
And this new process isn’t rocket science that is that difficult to understand, it’s been used by municipalities like Edmonton and Athabasca County for a long time – both of which are bigger, more complicated and approved, months ago mind you.
How much budget debate is needed when its known there will likely be a hike in water and sewer rates to cover an increase in what the town must pay to the regional water commission, a likely jump in waste collection fees and a nearly guaranteed hike in property taxes to pay for an array of projects such as road work, sewer upgrades, to start paying for the new pool/library/school project and, of course, wage increases.
And what recently boggled the mind was council’s decision to avoid allocating their $880,000 surplus until after the town’s audit is completed, which incidentally could be months from now.
It was recommended to council by administration that all of that money, which for one reason or another wasn’t spent during 2014, be separated into a few different reserves.
Yet, in a quizzical decision, they put off a chance to put the money to good use on future project or program.
All apparently for what? From the looks of it, fear of not being able to take that money back and use it for some other purpose as opposed to the reserve it was placed in.
Budgets are a best guess, based upon certain revenues and expenses along with projections of what needs to be done and what people want done. They can and are changed mid-stream, just as money can be taken from one reserve and placed in another.
Maybe it’s simply time to stop going line by line, trust administration and get this done.
