Crowsnest Pass Budget 2011, Tough choices begin.

Before you know it Budget time will be here and believe me the choices will not be easy ones.

One of the toughest issues to deal with his the hiring of additional employees, on one hand you have the public perception that there is more than an ample number of employees.
Then on the other hand you have the workforce and administration that are faced with an ever changing working environment, attempting to cater to the demands of certain sectors of the public that wishes to see the Municipality provide additional services.

Previous council took the position that a hiring freeze was put into place, and instructed administration in the last budget process to get by with what they had.

What most people do not understand is that the Municipality collects approximately $6.5 million in property taxes.
Last year the municipality paid out approximately $4.6 million in wages.
On January 1st 2011 the employees are entitled to a wage increase of 4% on a payroll of the municipalities size that is an increase in cost of $184,000.

Last year the Public works dept requested an additional sewer plant operator, extra Linesman, the HR department had requested an half time assistant position.
Prior to the budget I sat on the FCSS committee where there was much discussion about hiring an additional person to handle the FCSS department.

The previous council also took the position that through better scheduling, the public works department could get by with two less casual positions.

I'm sure that administration will attempt to bring forth at least some of these positions again, if not all of them.
Cost to the budget $250,000 for the Sewer plant operator, Linesman, Assistant, and two Casual positions.
Additional person for the FCSS position $50,000.
Wage Increase approximately $184,000

Total additional cost of employees $484,000.

Keeping in mind that total taxes collected were approximately $6.5 million, which means each additional $65,000 spent results in a 1% increase in taxes.

$484,000 divided by $65,000 equals a 7.45% tax increase.

Now are there ways to avoid this tax increase? absolutely.

You can not do the positions, or you can find equivalent cuts in other areas of the operational budget.
Maybe there are services that can be cut, or inefficiences elimanated or a combination of both.

Lets not forget the $484,000 figure does not include any additional costs for the rest of the budget.

One example:
Lets think about marketing of the community, the municipality used to participate in what was know as the Marketing Consortium we placed $20,000 a year into a fund that marketed the community, well when we looked at the marketing that was being done for that money it was to say the least, very unimpressive.
Previous council stopped providing that $20,000. Now we have new councilors that are advocating better marketing of the community which I agree with, but you are not going to do anything effective for the previous dollars.
I was told by a person in another community that does a fair amount of marketing to allow at least a $100,000 per year, if you want to do a real job.
Add that to the above another 1.54%

What does that mean to the average taxpayer in the Crowsnest Pass? at $2000 a year in taxes a further 9%=$180 a year.

Just something to think about.