Council to vote on 2008 user fee schedule

With a projected increase of up to three percent in some areas, town council will vote to approve the 2008 user fee schedule tonight.
“There’s a general consensus of council that there should be up to a three percent increase,” Mayor Roy Avis noted this morning. “We were trying to stay within the cost of living adjustment.
“[The user fee schedule] went back to the departments and each committee for review, and the numbers we’ll see tonight are the ones that went through the review,” he added.
In past years, user fee schedules often weren’t approved until late winter or early spring, but Mayor Avis said the town’s trying to get all its budget issues aligned before the year’s end.
“What’s happened previously is sewer and water would be two months behind [the rest of the user fee rates being set] and then there would be a catch-up period where they’d have to have increased billing or have to do a balance throughout the year,” he noted.
“This way, if we can do it prior to year-end, it works out our full-year budget.”
Tonight’s council meeting—being held a week early due to the Christmas holidays—will start at 6 p.m. It will be preceded by the committee of the whole at 5:30.
Other business at tonight’s meeting will include:
•a demonstration of how to use vote-by-mail kit by town clerk and returning officer Glenn Treftlin;
•activity reports by the chairpersons of the Administration and Finance, Community Services, Operations and Facilities, and Planning and Development executive committees;
•a request from the Alzheimer Society of Kenora-Rainy River districts to proclaim January as “National Alzheimer Awareness Month” in the Town of Fort Frances;
•a bylaw to approve an agreement with Metro Waste Paper Recovery Inc. as a destination for materials collected and to be recycled as part of Fort Frances’ waste management program;
•a bylaw for the purpose of approving the minutes of current council;
•a request for reconsideration of minutes of settlement for 352 Third St. E.; and
•an invitation for 2008 membership in the “Communities in Bloom Ontario” program.