The Remembrance Day holiday pushed the City Humboldt council meeting to Nov. 14.
Besides the Original Humboldt award presentations (See story on page 2), City Manager Joe Day also gave an update to council regarding the 2018 budget.
“We’re not necessarily going to be able to fully complete the budget by year end or we will have to set some special council meetings,” says Day.
While there are still some stiff targets in comparison to previous years, with budget deliberation set for late November, however approval is looking to take place in January, which is still three to four months earlier than previous years, says Day.
“We’ll still achieve all the objectives we’re trying to get at with earlier budget timelines.”
Staff have been working diligently, says Day to get documentation ready and have those budget discussions within city departments.
The way things have been done has changed so council gets a clearer picture of budget spending.
This has slowed down the process a little bit, says Day, however, councillors should be able to make better decisions.
Short staffing at the city has also caused some timing delays but everyone is working hard, says Day, to keep the process as on track as they can make it.
Currently there are some “cost drivers,” says Day that the city knows they will have to address, some favourable, some not so favourable.
These include changes to Grants-in-Lieu, revenue sharing grant which is down 6.48 per cent, REACT Landfill payments, and cost of living increases for staff.
The net impact, as reported by Day, is a $364,000 increase in cost.
To cover these unfavourable cost drivers, Day says they are currently seeing a 6.25 per cent tax, which would equate to a one per cent tax increase for every $58,000.
Day knows that council and the public will not want to see a tax increase of that level.
Work is continuing to drop that tax increase with Day and administration looking at where to generate more revenue while also looking at favourable cuts they can make for cost savings somewhere in the budget.
“If we’re unable to do that we’ll just have to find programs overall that we have been delivering and ask council if they want to reduce the scope of what we have been doing as a city.”
Excluding possible changes made to counter possible tax increases, Day says they should be able to keep operational and capital spending around previous years totals.
“It is a little early, we’re just working with the directors right now as to what capital projects we are contemplating and how we might be able to fund those.”
Going forward, Day says they are currently looking to finalize operational spending with heavy scrutiny on where they can find some cost saving plans. Next will be Capital Projects and which plans will be going forward in 2018 and which will not.
Budget meetings with council are still set for the end of November in order to give them a preliminary look at Budget 2018.
