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.
Jonathon Naylor Editor In their first detailed public statements on the upcoming municipal budget, city councillors are making it clear that they can't have their cake and eat it, too. Council has since November been piecing together their 2012 budget _ no easy task given the sheer volume of spending requests. 'The list is so long, the stuff that has to be done, and we only have so much money to spend,' said Coun. Karen MacKinnon. 'It's a challenge to pick out what are our top priorities.' Coun. Colleen McKee, chair of the Finance Committee, likened the dilemma to parenting. 'You know, it's almost like a mother and her children,' she said. ''What does this child need?' Well, yes, they need new shoes, but maybe they need a new coat before they need new shoes. You're doing this constant comparison.' Direction Not to say council has no sense of direction. As Mayor George Fontaine pointed out, council has taken 'whatever we had possible and aimed it in the direction of being prepared for seniors housing and whatever we have to do to get that.' He was referring to a recent vote in which council decided to potentially allocate $400,000 to service the tract of vacant land between Roche Boulevard and Wallace Avenue, overlooking Manitoba Avenue. It is hoped the site will eventually host two seniors housing complexes as well as a new residential subdivision. Mayor Fontaine said the Pine Avenue bridge, long closed to heavy traffic due to structural concerns, will also 'be studied in conjunction with other demands that we have.' Coun. Bill Hanson, who has helped assemble more budgets than any other councillor, stressed the importance of government grants in determining which initiatives proceed. And even when priorities are singled out, he said, they tend to change as components of the aging municipal infrastructure break down, creating immediate needs. See 'New...' on pg. 7 Continued form pg. 1 The tendency for council priorities to evolve due to financial circumstance is evident in recent budgets. In 2007, council set aside $200,000 to develop a new subdivision with roughly six or seven lots at the end of Horace Avenue (near the Adams Street apartments). The project never materialized. And in both 2008 and 2009, council budgeted $1.6 and $2 million respectively to install water meters in every Flin Flon home. Again, this never happened. Municipal Administrator Mark Kolt said it's too early to speculate much on what will be included in this year's spending plan. 'Because the needs vary from year to year, it's difficult to say, until you've done the review (of the needs), what the full range of priorities should be,' he said. 'The first step in the process is just figuring out where we're at _ what could use work and what could use attention.' Added Mayor Fontaine: 'The stage we're at right now is in looking at those and trying to figure out what our priorities are.' Coun. McKee said being on council brings a new perspective to the financial challenges facing the city. 'Interesting' 'It's interesting when people start thinking about things we need in our community, start looking at it, and we tend to be very narrow-minded when we look at what we need in our (own) neighbourhoods,' she said. 'But when you're sitting as a councillor and you start looking at every neighbourhood and every department, priorities are constantly changing.' Council's 2011 budget, worth $10.74 million, greatly limited the city's future borrowing capacity, casting doubt on major new capital projects for the foreseeable future. The city borrowed $4.41 million for its share of the new water treatment plant, a move that Coun. McKee said 'has restricted our ability to borrow monies for the next 15 years.' Excluding the water treatment plant, the city set aside $1.4 million for capital projects in 2011. Among them: a $250,000 heat-recovery system at the Whitney Forum and $176,500 for equipment, including a new garbage truck. To balance the budget, the city planned to dip into its accumulated surplus and reserve accounts to the tune of $356,000 _ $51,000 more than in 2010. HBMS contributed an extra $400,000 compared to 2010, bringing its total grant in lieu of taxes to $5.23 million _ essentially half of all city revenue. Overall, the budget boosted municipal spending by $336,000, or three per cent, over 2010.
