City Council: Budget proposal tabled over fee increases
The steady and ongoing increases in water and sewer rates led the City of Moose Jaw’s proposed budget for 2018 being officially tabled for further review and adjustment at the city council meeting on Feb. 26.
After a series of revision votes – ranging from digitization of the city records to the potential hiring of a infrastructure technician – brought forth by Coun. Brian Swanson as budget committee reports from the last month were submitted, his issues were brought to a head when the final report from Feb. 13 was to be voted on. That report finalized the 5.01 per cent tax increase, as well as the 15 per cent waterworks utility rate and six per cent sanitary sewer rate increases. Swanson’s first area of contention – the two rate increases – ended up seeing the budget returned for revision.
“I’m as aware as anyone around the table here about need for core capital infrastructure upgrades,” Swanson said in an introduction on his motion for a re-vote on the increases, seeking to see them defeated with a new round of council voting. “The difference is how they’re paid for, and the idea that we can continue to say there’s nothing we can do with the operations at City Hall, therefore we need a whole bunch of money from the taxpayers in the community, I think we’ll fail. There’s not enough money available.” Swanson pointed out that a 15 per cent increase had last occurred in July 2017, with the current increase set for May. 1 and similar rate adjustments expected for the next four or five years.
“We need to show some leadership and reallocate existing spending towards higher priority items. I have no illusion that you can do that and no one would notice,” he said. “I don’t believe that is sustainable for the people of the community and I’m suggesting there’s better places to find it in our existing spending.”
Coun. Dawn Luhning went even further in her assessment of the situation.
“We can not keep going to the taxpayers and doing the same thing over and over and over again... you tack it on year after year and eventually it’ll break people,” Luhning said, pointing out that the 15 per cent increases have been ongoing for nearly 10 years at this point.
“We have to look at ourselves and look at finding ways to cut back, cut costs and stop these increases. We might not like that, because we’ll actually have to sharpen our pencils and actually do something that’s different than we’ve ever done before... if we actually said ‘you have to cut costs across the board by 10 per cent, find efficiencies, I bet you things might be done differently and there might be some changes that happen.”
As the debate continued, Coun. Scott McMann pointed out that the city is looking toward a new priority budget system in the new year, a move that could see radical changes to how funds are allocated and as such potentially find such savings next year.
For the immediate future, though, keeping the two utilities funded at the planned level was of importance.
“It’s fine to say we shouldn’t be increas- ing fees at that level but we haven’t had any plans saying that we’re going to cut this, this, this and this,” McMann said, referring to the actions the priority budget might take. “So until that’s presented, I don’t know how we can deal with it any other way than how it’s been done... I don’t like to support 15 per cent and six per cent rate increases and we need to do better in the future, but it’s the reality this year.”
Mayor Fraser Tolmie also spoke to the issue, saying that not supporting the utilities at the planned level could have dire consequences.
“I think we have to put this into perspective,” he said. “Our water source is over 20 kilometres away from us and if we don’t plan to upgrade these water lines and we were caught without water, the uproar from the public would be ‘why didn’t you do something about it’... I think putting a reasonable cost on a water supply that is over 20 kilometres away at this time before we start doing priority budgets is the right thing to do.”
Solving the issue this year and in the close future was something Coun. Chris Warren pointed out would take much input and many suggestions from city administration to create the revisions needed to still fund the waterworks and sewer. “This requires a systematic approach from the experts in city administration... we have funding that’s in the works, we have projects that are already approved and if we don’t have the 15 per cent increase, it has to be found somewhere else and that’s where the administration needs to work together to come up with that and with some urgency,” Warren said.
The resulting re-vote that the city administration be directed to amend Bylaw No. 5152 – the sewer and water utility bylaw – to reflect the increases was subsequently defeated 4-3, with Swanson, Luhning, Warren and Coun. Don Mitchell voting against; Tolmie, McMann and Coun. Crystal Froese voting in favour. Shortly after the entire budget report was tabled in order to allow city administration to attempt to lessen the rate increase burden, with city council providing direction in that area as needed.
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Earlier budget reports were also challenged by Swanson:
-- An increase of $50,000 to the human resources contracting services account to provide for the development of new job evaluations was re-voted and defeated. -- An increase of $53,000 for an employee active living program was re-voted and defeated.
-- A media management software funding request for IT project funding of $80,000 for the digitization and cataloguing of historical records, currently in a haphazard state in the city hall basement, was re-voted and again approved.
-- A funding request of $50,000 for a longterm sustainability study conducted by an outside consultant firm was re-voted and defeated
-- A request for $70,000 for the hiring of an additional city planner was re-voted and again approved.
-- A request for $60,000 for the hiring of a new GIS infrastructure technician was re-voted and again approved. ****
A rather heartwarming moment occurred early in the council meeting of Feb. 26 as members of the Moose Jaw Murals Project Management Committee spoke toward having their funding restored. Committee members Elizabeth Dusomme and Norma Westgard both delivered remarks passionately in support of the ongoing project and how much it means to the city and it’s existence as a boon to tourism.
As it turns out, city council wholeheartedly agreed, with Coun. Don Mitchell immediately moving that $12,500 in funding be returned to the committee.
Why had it been removed in the first place?
Brian Acker, finance director for the City of Moose Jaw, revealed that upon looking into the matter, it appeared the murals funding had simply been missed as an individual line item, and that as a status-quo budget, it should have been included. It was simply a matter of a miscommunication or misfiling.
After small amount of discussion in full support of the murals and the committee, council voted unanimously to restore the full funding total of $12,500. ****
Council named Mitchell the new Deputy Mayor, Swanson the Executive Committee Chairperson and Warren the Personnel Committee Chairperson for a term from Mar. 1 to Apr. 30 for all three positions.