Owen Sound council has a big job ahead as it tries to whittle down a proposed tax hike of 7.64 per cent.
Council was presented on Thursday with a draft budget of 22.1 million dollars ($22,187,076).
That is an increase of 1.5 million ($1,574,476) over last year’s budget.
It was the first day of a two-day pre-budget round table discussion, during which senior managers are talking with council about the departments they supervise.
Mayor Deb Haswell says the purpose of the talks is to drill down beneath the numbers and to look very closely at the services provided by the city — not just at the costs of those services.
And She says some tough decisions will have to be made in order to bring the budget down to a level that council, staff and ratepayers can all live with.
For instance, winter maintenance is an area that will be closely examined.
Haswell says it’s such a difficult thing to budget for because of the unpredictability and severity of the weather.
Given that road salt alone is costing the city half a million dollars a year — the Mayor says it may be time to simply tell local motorists to slow down and take better care on roads that won’t be as well maintained as they traditionally have been.
That hasn’t been determined yet.
Neither has the future cost of garbage bag tags, although council did reject a proposal to increase revenue by raising the price from 2 to 3 dollars per tag.
Haswell says the public deserves an opportunity to comment on that idea before it’s approved.
Council also rejected the recommendation of an arms-length committee that addressed the issue of council remuneration.
The committee said in November that councillors deserved a base pay increase from $11,692 per year to $14,000.
Council approved the recommendation at that time, but voted it down on Thursday.
The city is still dealing with the latest cut to Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund grants – another $162,000 will be lost in 2011.
Haswell says she and council need to keep pushing the province to examine why the transfer payments keep decreasing and what can be done to reverse that trend.
Although the province is dealing with a massive deficit, Haswell says investing in strong communities is something Ontario must continue to do.
Today’s proceedings will be dominated by in-camera talks to which the media will not be privy.
Another pre-budget meeting is scheduled for February 11th.
Final budget deliberations will take place on March 23rd and 24th.
The 2010 budget was 5.81 per cent higher than in 2009, although the actual tax increase was mitigated by decreases in the county and education portions of the bill.
