Long budget process ends with a 7-2 vote of approval for 2019-2022 Operating Budget

LPS’ base budget was adjusted to bring it more in-line with other departments through the budget process, and a number of initiatives were also referred until City Manager Bramwell Strain is able to carry out fiscal performance reviews of different city departments.

The increase works out to an average of $3.50/month, or $42/year, on an average single-family residential home with an assessed value of $267,300.

Councillor Blaine Hyggen acknowledged that city staff have sharpened a pencil when it comes to the budget.

“I really think our City Manager has taken the advice from council, but I just think there’s more that we could have done. We could have tightened down a little bit more, so for that reason, I decided to not be in favour of it.”

Hyggen didn’t cite anything in particular that drew his ire, instead mentioning a lot of little things that could’ve been tightened up.

“I think throughout the process we were sending so many things to the City Manager to find out, so obviously there’s going to be a cost to that if we carry through with them at a later date.

“As Council, we have approved this budget, where there were some frustrations, but I do respect Council and their decision to move forward with it,” Hyggen said, adding he plans to keep his nose to the grindstone when it comes to finding efficiencies going forward.

Mayor Chris Spearman was supportive of the process city council went through.

“I think council needed a rest after six days of debate, and at the last council meeting with a one-day break, they felt they weren’t ready to pass the budget,” Spearman continued. “When we met again as Finance Committee, some resolutions came forward, minor tweaking really, and today we passed the budget.”

Spearman thinks council listened to the citizens, and to the downtown businesses.

“We wanted to focus on community safety. We funded the key pieces of the police’s new initiatives, and basically, we held the line on the core budget. We did fund some minimum wage increases to keep our fee-for-service organizations whole and I think generally it’s been a very responsible budget. It’s the lowest tax increase in decades,” Spearman said.

Spearman mentioned that people will ask why taxes never go down, and he says the reason for that is their expenses continue to increase year after year, they have eight collective agreements, and they have negotiated contracts they must honour.

“It’s very difficult to lower costs, and what people don’t realize is other orders of government have tax increases all the time and they come out of your pay every week. It’s much more noticeable at the municipal level when you get one notice a year and you can see the difference.

“People react to that and we just do the best that we can, there are limits to what we can do, but we will also be reviewing the services that we offer. So, there may be opportunities down the road for savings, and we’ll have to decide whether we should be doing services to the same level or whether we should be providing those services at all.”

Those reviews were delegated through the budget process to the City Manager and Spearman believes they could have a bigger impact down the road.

by Aaron Mahoney (@Mahones93 on Twitter)

Long budget process ends with a 7-2 vote of approval for 2019-2022 Operating Budget

What's Happening