Duane Hicks
While town council was on track to look at the 2013 draft budget before the end of December, last week’s announcement regarding the indefinite idling of the kraft mill and #5 paper machine here will set the process back a couple of months.
At Monday night’s council meeting, Fort Frances CAO Mark McCaig said the town started the budget process in September with a public meeting and had been working on it since—most recently bringing a draft before the executive committees for review.
“Actually, this year looked like a pretty good budget year from that standpoint,” McCaig remarked. “There wasn’t a lot of work in terms of whittling down what we thought we were going to have to do at that point.
“Then last week, we had a pretty significant announcement in our community and it is throwing the whole process into a situation where we have to rethink a number of things.
“There’s a whole host of considerations that have to be taken into account with the recent announcement from Resolute Forest Products and for that reason, I am proposing to council tonight that we postpone bringing forward the budget pending a more thorough review in consideration of some of the items that are present and bringing forward that budget at the end of February,” he added.
McCaig noted council typically spends its last meeting of December taking a look at the operating and capital forecasts for the year ahead, then hash out the budget over the next three months or so.
“This is totally different and it’s going to take a little bit more thought,” he stressed. “It’s been waylaid somewhat. . . .
“I mean, there’s a good baseline to work from, obviously, all the budget work has been done, but it’s not a budget I think that administration or council wants to present at this time,” he reasoned.
“We’re going to take a lot harder look at it,” McCaig added. “We’ve begun the process at administration to start looking at some cost-saving measures.
“We will begin the process of consulting with council to see exactly where we want to go from here.
“And there’s many, many significant considerations that have to be undertaken and looked at at this time,” he warned.
