Timmins city council has formally approved the city's operating budget for 2016.
This year the total budget comes to $69,610,665 dollars, with $61.7 million of that being city operational costs. A little over $7.9 million dollars is allotted to the capital budget.
'Capital' is the term used for all city owned infrastructure such as buildings, roads and sidewalks, and will include the engineering design phase for a new aquatic centre.
In the two most recent changes to the budget, council has approved a $30,000 increase in grants to volunteer organizations, and a decrease of $15,000 for 'Tourism Special Events.'
Mayor Steve Black spoke with reporters at the conclusion of the four-hour plus meeting. He was happy with the finished product.
“Obviously its been a long process that started off with some rather daunting numbers in the first draft of the budget, and I believe council worked hard but responsibly to reduce those numbers. Keep in mind, we have been advised by multiple consultants now that we need to be investing more in capital and that's what council decided to do in this budget process was add significantly more dollars to the capital budget so that we can get some of those projects that we've been putting off for a number of years started,” he said.
For local taxpayers, the overall mill rate change will be minus one percent (-1%) Individual citizen tax impact will depend on their most recent property re-assessment results.
These assessments are carried out by MPAC (Municipal Property Assessment Corporation), a province wide organization.
“You have to keep in mind that the average assessment increase in the municipality, in terms of re-assessment was I believe, around 4 to 5 percent.”
“If you had a zero assessment change on your house, you will see a negative one percent tax change. But if you had a four percent assessment increase, you will be seeing a three percent tax increase. Whatever your assessment change was, minus one percent,” said Black.
Many a taxpayer will be asking what kind of impact did the $105,000 dollar Core Services Review performed by KPMG have on this year's budget?
Black says there are at least eleven savings suggestions that have been approved, or will soon take affect.
Two weeks ago, an 'implementation plan' was posted on the city's web site outlining the cost cutting measures. They include a review of travel budgets, charging fees for false alarms, and an item titled 'address process inefficiencies'.
“But there's over thirty recommendations in the public document, and then more in the in-camera and a lot of those, council is still continuing to go through and will either choose to implement or not implement as we go through this year. Then obviously the majority of those savings would be found in the 2017 budget,” said Black.
Over the past few months, many councillors have spoken out against certain suggestions within the KPMG report. Some around the council chambers said they felt borderline insulted.
“As we said at the start, its a core service review and it identifies many opportunities, but as Oscar (Poloni) said himself there are opportunities based on what you are legally legislated to provide as a community and he understands and accepts many communities provide additional services that the residents desire,” said Black.
He believes that despite some of the numbers making headlines, the pros outweigh the cons when discussing the overall effectiveness of the core service review.
“I think it was a great process. If you look at a single item, like the decisions that were made around the Golden Manor to look at savings, those far outweigh the cost of doing that study, so it was still a very beneficial process to go through as a council,” said Black.
“Obviously it created a lot of turmoil and discussion on whether council is following all the recommendations, or some of the recommendations but the public should be aware that we have decided to implement a number and that the savings generated through those recommendations will be far greater than the cost of the report itself.”
Black says that when city treasurer James Howie last presented the numbers to council, approximately 90 percent of total taxpayers would see an increase of $139 dollars or less.
“I'm sure there will be residents who feel its bad news, and there will be residents who accept that its a reasonable number for what we're doing going forward and some of the capital investments that we're making throughout the community to improve it. I think today's budget approval is a reasonable step forward for what we need to do as a community in terms of infrastructure investment.”
