The 2015 budget for the City of North Battleford has been officially adopted by council.
The resolution to adopt the budget passed unanimously at the special meeting held Dec. 15.
The final approved budget includes a 4.5 per cent increase in property tax revenue, a five per cent increase in base water rates and a three per cent increase on the base sanitary sewer rates.
It also includes a new underground pipe and asphalt replacement special tax, calculated at $3 per foot of foot frontage and added to the property tax.
The special tax is being held in a separate account to go strictly towards pipe and asphalt infrastructure projects.
While “underground pipe” is included in the name of the special tax, it will be used in 2015 for asphalt work to complete 100th Street from 14th Avenue to 20th Avenue.
A much larger capital initiative levy had earlier been proposed that would have also included raising over a million dollars in additional revenue from a levy on utility rates. But that proposal was removed as councillors made known their concerns that the tax burden for 2015 would be simply too much for property taxpayers to handle.
The special meeting was held after four nights of deliberations that took place over a span of two weeks. While deliberations on the budget, and its proposed special tax to fund infrastructure, were lengthy in scope over the two weeks, the special meeting itself was a short one, lasting only a half hour.
A good amount of the meeting included discussion of correspondence from the Battlefords Chamber of Commerce. City Manager Jim Puffalt said he had met with the Chamber’s executive director Linda Machniak and president Ryan Moe the previous Thursday.
Their correspondence to the City, dated Dec. 12, included comments critical of some aspects of the budget.
“We raise a cautionary note about the overall increases, in their totality,” stated Moe in that correspondence that was circulated at the special meeting, noting “we still see many ‘nice to haves’ and ‘wants’ as opposed to needs in the departmental budgets that if removed, may impact the total ask in property tax increases.”
Councillors wanted to know specific details about what it was they were referring to, with Councillor Ryan Bater observing that the comment was “an easy thing to throw out there.”
Mayor Ian Hamilton said he would be asking for clarification in their response to the Chamber.
On a related note, the Chamber has invited city officials to a luncheon Jan. 7 at Balych Mural Meeting Room, at which time officials will present the 2015 budget and the special tax and go into detail on it.
The next steps following adoption include passage of the mill rate bylaws and sending tax bills in the mail, but that will not happen for some time. Mayor Hamilton told reporters that they will need to wait until the education portion of the taxes is finalized, and that won’t likely be received until April.
The main purpose of passing the budget now was in order to give administration the go-ahead to proceed with the planning on the capital projects that need to be done, Hamilton indicated.
“It’s the earliest out of the gate we’ve every been,” said Hamilton. “Now that we have the advantage of in-house engineering, we know we can get out the tendering process for major projects a lot earlier this year.”
