Why has the Crowsnest Pass budget not been passed yet? Questions and Answers

A local newspaper asks the question is the council taking to long to pass a budget? Well if the taxpayers are ok with a 7.5% increase the answer is yes but I certainly would not agree to an increase of that amount.

Why is it taking so long to pass a budget with a lower rate of increase?
Simple councilors must be willing to make cuts to bring the increase down to a reasonable level.

Why has this not happened? well I can only speak for myself, being a member of council means one must be willing to bring forth suggestions, make motions and decide on tough choices. Is council prepared to do that? I am.

How much money are we talking about? roughly $150,000 just to get down to 5%

Are there ways to close that gap? of course there always is ways to be more efficient, do we have a choice if I or you was spending more money than we had coming in we would have to make tough choices?

What are some of the suggestions? The following are some of the ideas that have been thrown out for debate. I would welcome other ideas if somebody wished to present them. But here are the options presented so far.

Advertising in one local Newspaper would save $25,000 a year minimum.

Seniors rebate, a couple of years back council put in place a policy that tax rates for seniors on lower income levels would be maintained at 2006 levels. The problem with that is twenty years from now those folks would still be at 2006 levels. By going to 2007 levels $10,000 would be saved.

Marketing Consortia/Economic Development
We have in the budget $37,500 for these areas, do we need to leave all that money there? we have not had a Economic Development officer for almost a year, we also have formed a new adhoc committee to look at this area and make some recommendations, by the time this new board does that, a good chunk of the year will be gone by.

Community Organizations Funding
What has been thrown on the table is a 20-25% reduction in funding for such things as the Bellevue mine, Allied Arts, Museum, Thunder in the Valley weekend etc. Which would generate a savings of between $42-52,000

Eliminate a Part time personnel position
Would save $35,000.

Eliminate the Corporate Review
When you are in a difficult financial position it becomes evident that you need to look within, using a totally unbiased non political approach to determine where you could be more efficient. A number of councilors including myself have recommended that we hire a consultant to do this, cost $65,000

Municipal Development Plan
It has been suggested that we start a municipal development plan this year, it has been a quite a few years since we did this, does it need to be done? of course, should it be now? Strategy #1 of the Land Use Framework states "Municipalities, other local authorities and provincial government departments will be required to comply with each regional plan" When will we know what are regional plan is? next year. Do we spend $50,000 this year and find out next year that our development plan does not conform with the regional plan? tough choice.

None of the above suggestions have been decided on by council yet, but they certainly do give us options to reduce the burden on the taxpayers the choices are indeed tough, but never the less must be made.