The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Question: How is our council working to get our city debt-free? Mayor Therien: As nice as that may sound, your city will NEVER be debt-free. I say that because long-term debt is the only way to finance major projects, e.g. the water treatment plant, that would never be able to be financed in a single taxation year without putting undue influence on your property tax notices. It has been said before that your city, as well as most other municipalities in Canada, have huge infrastructure deficits, all or most of which require substantial dollar investments to complete. Most of these require a huge investment that could not and should not be borne in a single tax year. Having the ability to borrow money (usually from the province) is great and is probably the only way to go in most circumstances. There is a catch, though, to the borrowing process. Each municipality is governed by a set of rules and regulations that set a borrowing capacity with the formula being based on your total property assessment values, for the most part. This is designed to protect you, the taxpayer, from having council put the city into a debt-repayment ability issue. As of today, your city is nearing its debt limit with the inclusion of the water treatment plant financing. Most debentures have a payback limit of 20 years and, as a result, there are peaks and valleys in terms of the debt load financing in any given tax year. One time you have lots of room, other times you do not. Currently, as I said, we are at a peak level. This, of course, limits what else you can do from a long-term perspective until some of the debentures are fully paid off. * * * Question: What can/does the city do to encourage more civic pride? Mayor Therien: Civic pride can be defined, probably, in many different ways. My definition is to promote the city in a positive and progressive manner. This can and does come in many different ways and means. City council continues to improve and upgrade various areas within our city, including putting a lot of money into park improvements throughout the entire city. We have agreed to the development of a downtown park which I believe will instill some civic pride. We continue to have an "open for business" attitude and continue to promote this in any way we can. We have agreed to the development of a UCN mini-campus that will help to progressively change the landscape of Flin Flon, and there is a chance of expanding the UCN presence in the future as well. There still is a negative for us to deal with in the downtown area and that is, of course, the Flin Flon Hotel. Hopefully this issue will resolve itself in the near future and we will, once again, see this corner active and vibrant. We continue to market Flin Flon to the outside world as often and as best we can. Such things as being involved in The Hunting Chronicles (television) show has done nothing but good for Flin Flon. We have one of the best museums I have seen in smaller centres that continues to show people our earlier years, all of which is a great source of civic pride. I could go on with things like the Flinty Boardwalk, HudBay's million-dollar fund projects, etc., but we do not have that much space available in this column. * * * Send your questions for Mayor Therien to The Reminder by phone at 687-3454, fax at 687-4473, e-mail at [email protected] or standard delivery at "Ask the Mayor," C/O The Reminder, 14 North Avenue, Flin Flon, Manitoba, R8A 0T2. No names are required.
