Budget deliberations are not expected to happen at North Battleford City Hall until the new year.
The deliberations were supposed to begin earlier this month, but the department of finance was set back due to a crash of the City's server Oct. 31.
Unfortunately, the city's budget files that were saved on the server were not backed up externally at the time of the crash.
The City has not had access to critical budgeting documents, according to a memo from Matthew Hartney, director of finance, dated Dec. 6.
The result has been a delay of a few weeks before the City will be ready to go ahead with draft budget deliberations. According to the budget timeline, those budget deliberations are now expected to go ahead the week of Jan. 14. The actual dates and times for the budget deliberations have not been set.
The 2013 budgets to be deliberated and presented include the annual operating budget, the five-year capital plan and water and sewer utilities. As well, Hartney indicated in his memo to council that the finance department, other senior administration, the Finance Committee and council will be meeting periodically over the coming weeks to finalize the budgets.
It is now projected that adoption of the final budgets for 2013 should be up for approval by the week of Jan. 28.
