Local residents had the opportunity to give their thoughts on the Town of Bonnyville's 2015 budget last week as the municipality held its annual end-of-year budget open house, with initial estimates indicating a near $4 million decrease in anticipated revenues and expenses in the operational budget next year.
With a two per cent tax dollar increase already set in stone for both residential and non-residential taxpayers in 2015, the municipality is expected to see a near $50,000 surplus in next year's operational budget, money that could potentially be used to fund a new RCMP administrative support position.
Revenues for 2015 are expected to top out at $23,801,799, down roughly 15 per cent from last year's total of $27,540,975. The municipality's expenses have also seen a significant decrease, with the Town budgeting for $23,754,888 in costs next year as opposed to $27,540,975 in 2014 – a drop of just over 13.5 per cent.
In terms of spending, the municipality will be putting almost $2.5 million towards financing emergency services in Bonnyville, as well as budgeting close to $10.8 million for public works and transportation spending. Assistant CAO Bill Rogers indicated the majority of those funds would be used to maintain and develop the Town's roads ($4 million), water lines ($2.8 million) and landfill transfer station ($1.75 million).
Rogers also briefly addressed Bonnyville's five-year capital plan, with the municipality expecting to spend just over $17.8 million dollars in 2015. A large chunk of that – just over $10.6 million will go towards supporting such projects as the Town's back alley paving program, its annual pavement overlay program and the on-again off-again North Point road and drainage re-design project. The latter project, which came back to council earlier this year at the request of landowners in the area, could cost as much as $8.8 million.
Another $8 million will be spent on the Town's infrastructure replacement program, with work set to be carried out along Lakeshore Drive and 51 Avenue providing the municipality receives funds from the federal government through its Building Canada program.
The Bonnyville Regional Airport will see a $400,000 investment with the Town committing to landing and taxiway upgrades to the runway in 2015. A further $279,500 will be spent acquiring a new gravel truck, mowers, GPS locator and one-ton truck to bolster the municipality's public works fleet.
Director of Finance Renee Stoyles gave a brief presentation outlining the town's 2015 equalized tax and assessment rates, long-term debt and major revenue and expenditure sources and comparing them to similar sized municipalities across Alberta. According to Stoyles, Bonnyville and its residents appear to be in good shape, lining up under the provincial median on almost all the above topics.
Speaking to the Nouvelle at the open house, Mayor Gene Sobolewski said he was “reasonably pleased” with what he believes to be a positive budget.
“Overall with the budget, I am reasonably pleased with it. There are some issues that need to be tweaked, but other than that, on the whole as an interim budget, I feel we're doing fairly well,” Sobolewski said.
One thing the local mayor was not happy about was the lack of public presence at a meeting that is held solely to ensure local residents have the opportunity to give their input on where they think the Town should be spending its money over the course of the next year.
“We're here for the public and it's the public we want to get in here for these meetings so that they can examine, scrutinize and ask questions about the budget,” Sobolewski said. “This is really the public's chance to come out and give their input and opinion on (what they feel) we should be doing.”
Although there was just the one local resident in attendance at the meeting, Sobolewski said council would not be deterred and would continue to host the annual open house.
“It's a little disappointing (that the public didn't come out) in force, but it's enlightening to me that somebody did come out and that tells me (the open house) is worth doing,” Sobolewski said. “Not many municipalities still do this, but we'll continue because we think it's a good thing to do.”
Council will gather for its final meeting of the year tonight (Dec. 9) where it is expected they will adopt and pass the 2015 interim operational and capital budgets.
