When Flin Flon city council last attempted to reduce yearly spending, back in 2013, it ended up going $717,931 over budget.
With the first budget of the Mayor Huntley era now proposed (but not finalized), council is hoping to this time succeed in modestly trimming expenditures.
Council has budgeted $12.61 million worth of spending in 2015, the same amount as last year.
But since last year went slightly over budget, council is actually aiming to clip costs by $75,100, or less than one per cent.
Residential and commercial taxation rates, known as mill rates, are dropping slightly, but that’s only meant to offset a proposed $50 boost to the yet-to-be-renewed special services levy.
In a nutshell, council intends to hold the line on spending and basically hold the line on taxes.
For all of the talk of infrastructure deficits and government-mandated expenditures, that’s pretty good. Give council credit for what must have been countless hours of deliberation and number crunching.
But the proposed budget is not without controversy.
The plan allots $2.6 million to purchase and retrofit the current Northern Bus Lines (NBL) garage, allowing it to become the city’s new public works shop.
When the city went public with plan to purchase the NBL garage last year, the price tag of $1.25 million raised some eyebrows, particularly since it wasn’t clear to taxpayers how much they would have to spend to retrofit the facility.
They now have their answer: an extra $1.35 million.
Can the city afford that? It most certainly can given that it still has a borrowing capacity of about $7.09 million (assuming the budget passes as presented).
The real question is, should the city spend that amount? And the answer, it would seem, is that there isn’t much choice in the long term given the sorry state of the current public works shop.
My only hope is that council thoroughly examined the cost of upgrading the current shop versus buying, and then extensively renovating, the NBL garage at a time when many residents feel overtaxed.
Development
What the budget is most lacking are real, concrete economic development investments.
Council should be commended for helping to attract new residents and tourists to Flin Flon through promotional initiatives.
But who is out there actively trying to lure secondary industries to Flin Flon? Who is exploring for opportunities as Creighton did with its potential, now-defunct and ultimately too-controversial, storage of nuclear waste?
Flin Flon was at one time a centre for medicinal marijuana production and research into plant-based pharmaceuticals. Why can’t we investigate that promising world again?
What the partial strike at Hudbay has illustrated is that after nearly 90 years, Flin Flon still has its eggs in one basket – a very cyclical basket dependent not on any steps we take as a community, but on where God hid all the ore.
I’d hazard a guess that Flin Flon could hire a top-of-the-line economic development officer for $80,000, maybe $90,000 a year.
That’s a big commitment, yes, but the returns could be immeasurable.
Fixing roads is important, and the city’s proposed budget does a lot of that. More important is taking proactive steps that ensure we have more residents driving on those roads.
Local Angle runs Fridays.
