Starting what looks to be a journey down a long road, town council and administration began its major budget review to sustain continuity on an annual basis Monday afternoon.
“I think we’re going to have to go through the whole document before we go any further,” Mayor Glenn Witherspoon said at the end of the hour-long session that preceded the committee of the whole meeting.
Councillors were presented with a thick document listing 30 recommendations from town staff as to how cutbacks could be made, or new ways to create revenue, in various areas.
The idea is for council to determine how much it feels it needs to put away in reserves—starting in the 2004 budget year, said Fort Frances CAO Bill Naturkach.
While an amount—$1,540,000—was included as a hypothetical model in the document in question, Naturkach noted this figure is something that likely will change as it goes through all the areas in the document, such as sewer and water connection services, snow removal, and fire and rescue services, among others.
“It’s a work in progress, for sure,” said Naturkach.
Some ideas that were briefly discussed for establishing this baseline figure was to find out what the town’s assets are insured for or to use a percentage of annual taxation.
Still, there was some other discussion as to the town only relying on reserves in emergencies and avoiding using the money for capital expenditures not budgeted for in the annual budget, as happens too often, said Coun. Deane Cunningham.
With little done Monday and the report being only recently presented to councillors, council agreed numerous meetings will be necessary before the 2004 budget process begins, with the next one slated for this coming Monday (March 17) at 5 p.m. at the Civic Centre.
Naturkach said the review was called as a condition of council’s passing of the 2003 budget, which nearly didn’t get passed at all back on Jan. 13.
Since January, town administration and management went back to the budget to re-evaluate just how to reduce expenditures and increase revenues so as to prevent having to dip into its reserve funds yet again in 2004.
However, details as to specific areas to be cut back are not yet available to the media or the public as it possibly may involve the elimination of certain employee positions—and there is no need to “mitigate employee anxiety” at this time.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
