Now that we’ve all digested the City of Estevan’s budget proposal and city council has voted to approve it, it’s clear to the Mercury, this budget consists of good and bad.
The bad encompasses the two things that stand out the most: the mill rate increase and the debt issuance. The good is less obvious, but it involves programming and a plan that goes beyond the next fiscal year.
First, though, the bad.
A seven per cent increase to the mill rate is a fraction of the increases seen in the past two years, but it will still leave taxpayers dreaming of what a year might be like with a jump of less than five per cent.
As City Manager Amber Smale said about running the city without a tax increase in a growing city that still needs to play catch up, it would mean cuts to programming. It would mean projects would go another year uncompleted. The City’s expenses are going up, but it’s still nice to see a slight decrease in spending from the general operating fund.
Taking on $5 million of debt is more of a head scratcher. The City and mayor have been touting a rigid plan to pay off an escalating debt at a pace of between $3 million and $4 million each year, so most of us are left asking why?
With the debt payments the City will be making this coming year, the net increase to the debt will be about $3 million and is expected to put the City one year back from its previous debt-free target.
What is it that steered the City off the debt payment tracks and back onto the debt accumulation? Well, there are a number of things the City must do in order to be considered “legislatively” or “legally” compliant.
That includes work at the Estevan landfill, some of which Mayor Roy Ludwig noted has been put off year after year, like fencing.
Some of this new debt is the cost of tardiness and buck passing, and we hope the result is some lesson learning. Savings from years ago don’t do anybody much good today, when the best option is more debt.
While we still may be suffering because of previous councils and administrators who are no longer in charge, we expect the current leadership to move beyond the oversights and decisions made in the past.
At some point, we must all grow tired of playing catch up and will expect our leadership to get us into the position we want to be in. That brings us to the budget’s positives.
What we really want to see from the City is a plan, and we’re beginning to see that take shape, first with the unveiling of the City’s five-year strategic plan, and second with the roll out of an infrastructure management and renewal system.
It’s not easy to get excited about a manhole replacement program, but it’s stuff like that that will put us on a more sound course forward.
This programming also may go a long way to preventing further last minute costly infrastructure work that we’ll be seeing in 2015. We’re seeing more debt because work has to happen now. The City has no option but to tender work and complete it.
The roll out of the City’s planned programs we hope will truly put the City of Estevan on a path to better, more organized and more transparent management.
