Westlock County is in a “financial crisis” and may soon have to consider its future viability if the trends of the last five years continue.
The municipality is preparing a strategic planning session for Sept. 4, which deputy reeve Brian Coleman requested as he joined council’s Feb. 26 meeting remotely via speakerphone. Councillors voted 6-0 to tentatively set the date of the session, with Coun. Darrell Osmond absent.
“One of the things I’m very concerned about is we basically have a financial crisis, but we haven’t changed our strategic plan to deal with it,” he said.
“Before we actually start the budget process, I really believe we need a full day to thoroughly go through our plan and come up with some strategies to deal with the financial crisis that’s facing us.”
Councillors decided to set a day aside for the discussion once they have received public feedback at a pair of open houses scheduled for over the summer.
“With all the cuts in assessment year modifiers, we were down a lot of money,” said reeve Lou Hall after the meeting. “We’re still waiting to hear from the province on disaster relief funding for the flooding last year. There’s just a lot of outstanding revenue issues.
“We had to take a really strong look at our budget this year, but we’re going to have to go through it again.”
Noting the county has been on a four-year decline in revenue, chief administrative officer Leo Ludwig said the county was waiting to find out what revenue they were going to collect from tax assessment values before making its next move.
“This fiscal situation is not a surprise, it’s been our reality since 2014,” said Ludwig. “We’re just hoping the slide has come to an end, because if it continues on much further we’ll have to be talking about viability.”
The 2019 budget was approved with a 3.98 per cent tax increase.
“If we see any more negative changes, council is going to have to re-evaluate and figure out what it’s going to do,” said Ludwig. “Are we going to look at other cuts? Are we going to raise other fees or taxes more?”
Estimating the county had lost out on several million dollars in revenue, Ludwig added the county’s tax rate was not exactly low and the tax rate still needed to be brought within a five to one ratio between residential and non-residential mill rates.
Hall noted both administration and councillors were trying to find any cost saving measures they could.
In their December budget deliberations, she noted councillors agreed to freeze their honorariums and expenses at 2018 levels, even though a third of their earnings lost tax-exemption status.
“Since everybody expects service values to be maintained,” said Hall. “We felt we needed to lead by example.”
Councillors currently earn $2,085.72 in honorarium and a $1,042.86 allowance, adding up to $3,128.58 per month. The reeve receives $2,294.30 honorarium and $1,147.15 in allowance, totalling $3,441.45 per month.
