Central Frontenac Council - Mar. 23/10

Jeff Green | Mar 25, 2010

CF budget balloons: staff asked to take some of the air out

Central Frontenac Council invited staff from its various departments and representatives from its recreation committees to bring forward their wish lists to the 2010 budget process, and they have spent a number of meetings having the wish lists explained to them.

At the end of their Committee of the Whole meeting late on Tuesday afternoon, March 23, the cozy atmosphere of the 2010 budget process took a decided turn when Treasurer Judy Gray presented Council with a preliminary breakdown of where the budget stands.

In 2009, the township collected $4.378 million from Central Frontenac ratepayers for their own operations, and as it stood on Tuesday afternoon, they were poised to levy $5.935 million from those same ratepayers in 2010, an increase of almost $1.6 million, or 35.6%.

Recognising that this kind of increase was not going to fly, Township CAO John Duchene said he had already talked to Judy Gray and Public works Manager Mike Richardson about the numbers “and we do feel we can find some significant savings. We may have to approach things a little differently in order to do this. I will be approaching other department heads in the coming days. We will get information to you about where we are in advance of our budget meeting on April 13.”

Duchene also pointed out that at least one of the factors leading to the shortfall was a decrease of $200,000 in a transfer from the Province of Ontario to the township under the Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund.

Councilor Gary Smith, who was chairing the Committee of the Whole meeting when the budget discussion was taking place, asked Council if there was a number they would like staff to be working towards.

After consideration Council decided to ask staff to find savings or alternative revenue sources (presumably by taking money from township reserve funds) to cut the tax levy increase by over $1 million from the current budget.

Even if the township can find these savings, Central Frontenac ratepayers will still be faced with an increase of about 11.5% in the taxes they pay for local services.

However, the township portion of the overall municipal tax bill is about 50%, with education and county taxes making up the other 50%. The levies for both education and county taxes are not going up this year, so the overall impact of an 11.5% increase in township taxes would be around a 6% increase on the overall municipal levy.

But $1 million must still be found to make that happen.

Councilor Norm Guntensperger warned against cutting the budget too much. “Personally I hear more from people when we don’t deliver the services they want, particularly when it comes to roads. I don’t think we should be increasing what we do, but I don’t want to see any cuts to the services we do offer,” he said.

Nonetheless, Guntensperger did support the call for a $1 million cut to the levy.

As Tuesday’s Committee of the Whole meeting was about to adjourn, Councilor Frances Smith said, “I just want to point out that I find this a painful way to do budgeting. Asking everyone to come up with wish lists and then asking them to cut them back, and then having to cut them back ourselves just makes it that much harder. It would be better in the future for us to set some targets in advance, and to work from there.”