Sackville town council and members of the public had a first look at the proposed budget for the town for 2021 at a meeting last night.
Treasurer Michael Beal spent about two hours outlining operating and capital budgets for the town and utilities.
Beal called the draft a “status quo” budget, in that it maintains current tax rates and services.
Beal said the draft plan maintains the current tax rate of $1.56 per $100 assessment. “So a $100,000 home would pay $1,560 in municipal taxes,” explained Beal. “We looked at maintaining all current programs and services, with slight expansions and a couple of new things happening within the 2021 budget.”
In addition to some increases in staffing costs for some departments, the draft budget sets aside $65,000 for council initiatives, which staff suggest goes to subsidize arena user fees or pay for a planning study looking at Sackville’s skate park. There’s also about $35,000 set aside for climate change initiatives, said Beal.
The draft budget also maintains the policy of not borrowing to fund capital projects, but rather spending out of annual revenue, and also setting aside reserve funds to cover future major projects.
This is the, “second consecutive year where we do all capital including fire with no borrowing,” said Beal.
On top of no borrowing, the budget includes some savings, with “a $70,000 deposit to the general capital reserve fund, which we can use for future capital projects,” said Beal.
Funding all capital projects without borrowing of course means that debt payments will go down. Beal said that debt payments in 2021 will go down $95,000 as a result of the no borrowing policy.
There may come a year when the town needs to borrow, but Beal hopes the town’s savings will minimize the need.
“A couple years out, there’s going to be a firetruck that’s going to need to be purchased,” said Beal, which may require future borrowing.
“What we would be looking at doing is beginning to put away into a reserve fund, so that we can minimize any impact that will have on our future borrowing,” said Beal. “If we can get our reserve fund built up enough to cover that cost, and we would not have to borrow for that either.”
The no borrowing policy, combined with no tax increases, does mean a solid cap on capital projects, which makes for some potentially difficult decisions.
Beal said the initial capital spending requests from each town department totalled just over $2.1 million.
After gas tax revenues of just under $400,000 and capital spending of $1.2 million, that leaves over half a million in shortfall, explained Beal.
The town has posted the budget presentation and documents online for council and public consideration, and council will meet again next week, on October 26th, for questions and concerns.
Beal is hoping the budget will be approved by council at its November 9 meeting, in time for the province’s November 15th deadline.
CHMA’s budget coverage will continue throughout the coming weeks. If you have questions or concerns, send them to news@chmafm.com.
