Well after five nights of reviewing our budget line by line, and giving our CAO and department heads the opportunity to defend their individual departments requests.
After making some huge steps to get our budget under control such as spending a half of a hour debating about whether we are going to charge or not charge our individual residents to remove deep freezes ($4300 this year).
We recognized that council is not going to resolve the almost $1.7 million dollar shortfall we have. So Council directed administration to bring us back a budget with an tax increase of no more than 6% for Jan 21.
Concern raised by administration that some of our service levels may be affected by restricting our tax increase to 6% I am sure that taxpayers will not lose sight of the fact that we increased taxes by 11.2% last year.
It looks like we are going to have to make some difficult choices or raise taxes by 6% or more!
The scary part is 86% of our tax base is residential, and after getting a update from our assessor commercial property as virtually increased by nothing in the last year so all of the tax burden is going to fall back on the residential home owner.
3 comments:
Hi Dean,
Just curious, I've often wondered what the start up costs of water regulation would be. It is very, very stunning to me that a few businesses and wasteful individuals use so much water and yet pay the same as everyone else.
It is rare to find unregulated usage like here anymore. A base cost and go from there is common place, isn't it?
Surely it would be more economical and even an income generator in a very short period of time. Say, start with the commercial properties just in Blairmore and that should pay for the rest of CNP.
Thanks,
Toni
Dean, two items come to mind that could and should be cut from the budget: specifically the spring and fall cleanup and advertising due dates for utility bills.
With regard to the cleanup, I have used it as much as anyone else. However, having spent many years living in the "big" city, it always struck me as a phenomenal waste of taxpayer money. In urban areas, you either haul that sort of waste to the dump on your own, or you hire somebody to do it. The latter creates a small business opportunity for someone.
The newspaper ads concerning due dates on utility bills is right off the scale as a waste of taxpayer money. We all get many bills in the mail, each with a payment due date. It is our individual responsibility to make note of the due dates and pay them on time. If people aren't paying municipal utility bills on time, tack on a late penalty -- i.e. make money instead of spending it on ads. I know this cost is small compared to many other budget items,but it all adds up.
Just a few ideas for council to consider.
On water meters I would have no issue with those. I think the price of them should be set in such a way that anybody that uses an average amount of water would pay what they are paying today anybody that uses more than that should pay for that.
Spring/Fall cleanup is a total waste of time and money.
2007 $300,000 2008 $135,000 2009 in the range of $140,000.
And its not just the money for six weeks of the year our public works department does virtually nothing but pick up garbage.
Pincher Creek just dropped their cleanup because they could not afford $40,000
The Utility bill notice is another waste of tax payer dollars roughly $5000 per year.
Post a Comment