Nipawin council starting work on budget

Knowing they’ll have to spend more on waste disposal and receive less from the province, Nipawin’s council has begun work on a budget.

Council spent two long meetings Jan. 10 and 15, examining every line item for extra revenues or potential savings.

“We’d like to get as close to a balanced budget without having to increase taxes [beyond the 2.2 per cent increase seen last year],” said Rennie Harper, Nipawin’s mayor.

Barry Elliott, the town’s administrator, said he expects any tax increase would be nominal at worst.

“We absorbed some shocks last year with adjustments from the province, changes to the PST allocations, all those sorts of things. We adjusted to them pretty well.”

One of the largest shocks the town is dealing with is a loss of a grant-in-lieu from SaskEnergy due to provincial cutbacks. In 2016 the town received $102,000, in 2017 it received $43,000 and in 2018, it will receive nothing.

Shifting the ownership of the landfill to the Boreal Area Regional Waste Authority will also cost the town more as the landfill is upgraded to meet provincial environmental standards.

 “We already know going in that we’ve got some adjustments to make simply because of the shift in costs to the landfill operation,” Elliott said. “That still needs to be fleshed out a little bit and we’ve been very cognizant of that and I know council’s been trying desperately to minimize the rest of the impact on the basis that we’re expecting an increase there.”

Council is hoping that having the Pool @ Central Park open for an entire season and having a restaurant running in the Evergreen for most of the year will generate extra revenues.

On the expense side, the town has increased the amount it has devoted to general administration salaries by $32,000 so that it can hire a new finance officer. It’s looking at spending $340,00 for a new fire truck, $212,000 for a new payloader, $186,000 to replace the rink boards at the Centennial Arena, $190,000 for a streetsweeper, $3,500 to buy laptops or tablets for council so they don’t have to print so many 100-plus page documents, and $3,500 for an official town coat of arms.

It’s also considering selling off one of the two handivans it owns, which is something the town could go without to maintain current services, but has been kept around as there was some interest from surrounding towns to establish a regional handivan service.

Harper said there’s still some work to be done at this point to ensure that any expenses match the revenues the town will receive.