After months of deliberations, the Town of Turner Valley has eliminated its deficits for this year’s operating budget.
During its regular council meeting on March 4, Turner Valley Town council approved an operating budget of $5,786,971.
When council was initially presented with the budget at its Dec. 12 meeting, which showed a $199,815 deficit, former Coun. Barry Crane, now Turner Valley’s mayor, made a motion for administration to find ways to eliminate the deficit to keep the Town’s operating expenses consistent with 2018.
As a result, several cuts were made administratively from reducing colour photocopying to eliminating a full-time equivalent parks worker and using additional summer staff instead.
“Administration did a great job with council’s wishes,” said Crane following the meeting. “Council’s mandate from discussions all year was to keep taxes to a minimum and I think both sides delivered on that promise.”
Crane said while council has been successful at preventing tax increases in recent years, it can’t go on forever.
“At some point we’ll have to look at projects,” he said. “It’s important that we balance our expenses with our service levels.”
Corinne Middleton, manager of finance and corporate services, told council the budgeting process began in October and included five engagement sessions.
“Within that timeframe we had a lot of discussions and dialogue with respect to the capital and operating budgets,” she said. “Through January up to the present time we collaborated and obtained those savings.”
Administration proposed more than $209,000 in savings at council’s Feb. 19 meeting, but did not receive support in its suggestion to reduce operating hours at the Dr. Lander Memorial Outdoor Swimming Pool.
Council did support developing an online system for citizens to obtain and pay town bills with a $6,000 savings and implementing self registration at the Turner Valley Campground for a $16,000 savings.
Other savings council approved included $6,000 in restricting colour-copying, $9,500 in telephone expenses, $15,000 to scale back hours required for an in-house contractor for the Occupational Health and Safety program and $29,000 to eliminate a full-time equivalent parks worker and use additional summer staff instead.
Another $5,000 will be reduced in eliminating software and hardware that’s not being used to its fullest potential, $104,000 in engineering and project management costs and $4,100 for cleaning office mats and uniforms in-house.
“This was definitely a collaborative effort between council and administration,” said Middleton. “Although it did last five months, we accomplished an incredible amount and we had positive engagement and were able to go out into the community and obtain public participation.”
Middleton said the remaining $5,215 deficit will likely be absorbed into revenues for 2019.
“At this point that line item could factor into our tax, but I doubt that we’ll need it to,” she said. “We’re confident that our revenue will absorb that extra $5,215.”
