Budget Presentation to Council
Mayor’s Address
January 27, 2014
Introduction
I know that you are all
waiting for Mr. Villenueve’s remarks – he has all the interesting information.
The 2014 budget has been
four years in the making. Back in 2011 Council
set itself the objective of fiscal responsibility. This responsibility
had to balance the need for spending on municipal services with that of our
economic reality - slow growth; many residents dependent upon government supports;
and the loss of jobs in our community. Fairness
seemed to come in about the rate of inflation – in the range of 1-2%.
Fiscal responsibility also
meant asking serious questions about how we deliver our services. Council
commissioned and received the KPMG report in 2012. This report assessed all
departments and gave each department manager insights on how to better organize
scarce dollar and staff resources while providing quality services for our citizens.
Overall Budget
Building on this background
the Town of Midland’s 2014 budget will come in with a municipal tax increase of
1.7%.
This result took a lot of
hard work. The exercise began with Council
directing all departments to look at their operations and come forward with responsible
budgets for both 0% and 2 % cost growth. Departments took up the challenge and responded.
Council then took those results, weighed the public interest and crafted the
final budget that you see here tonight.
I want to thank Council,
our CAO Carolyn Tripp and CFO Marc Villeneuve for their leadership in the
budget work. I also want to recognize all the department heads for the hard
work that they put into making tonight’s budget a reality.
The budget allows for cost
growth of 1.9%, which while above the rate of inflation, required some
departments to make cuts. But the good news is that under the direction of Shawn
Berriault, Public Works is still safely plowing our roads the roads and Bryan
Peter and his Parks department still provides the best park services in Simcoe.
And even in these times of restraint, funds
were provided to many outside groups including:
-
Museum roof -
$145,000
-
Boys and Girls
Club $86,000
-
Hospital -
$41,000
-
Askennonia -
$6,000
Council has spoken many
times about the need to also direct funds to build our future – to economic
development, tourism and town infrastructure. Funding for these initiatives had
to be found by reallocating current dollars.
Our 2014 budget accomplishes this:
-
The Unimin
waterfront property was acquired (almost) for $4 million – The carrying costs
are included in the budget
-
Our focus on economic
development continues with a $50,000 investment – thank you to Wes Crown
-
LED street light
program will wrap up this year with the energy savings helping future budgets for
many years
The 2014 budget achieves
all of this while allowing our reserves to remain healthy and our debt
manageable.
The Future
Tonight’s budget is a step
on Midland’s path of financial management. We will put the 2014 budget to bed
shortly but there remain a number of fiscal issues that will continue to
confront Council:
-
The overall cost
of uniformed services is growing rapidly and must be reconciled with the
municipality’s ability to pay
-
Provincial downloading
is directing new costs to the taxpayers of Midland
-
The slow economy
has significantly impacted municipal revenues
Our budget is part of our
plan for the longer term. It has to be
responsible to the present and position us for a bright future. Thanks to
Council and staff the 2014 budget achieves those goals.