By Dan Singleton
MVP Staff
With Mountain View County councillors now in budget deliberations, Reeve Bruce Beattie says it's still too early to know if a tax increase is on the way for 2015.
Last year saw an overall tax rate increase of one per cent. Whether 2015 will see a similar rate won't be known for several months yet, he said during last week's regularly scheduled council meeting on Sept. 24.
“Our goal is to keep it at a minimum level, while at the same time recognizing that while our costs are going up we want to ensure that we are able to continue to provide the necessary services,” said Beattie “We do need to provide those services that are expected of us.
“We recognize that there are increasing costs. We will be focusing on what does this county need and make sure that we have adequate resources to deliver the services that we are expected to deliver.
“We are at the very preliminary stages. We are taking our time trying to make sure we have a good understanding of all aspects of the budget.”
On Sept. 23, councillors reviewed several budget documents and discussed projections with administration.
“Yesterday (Sept. 23) we did a more broad environmental scan, a broad consideration of the issues that are in front of the county from a provincial and a federal level, programs that might impact our budget decisions,” he said.
“We are starting to look at some of the detail around our equipment and the use of our equipment. There has been detailed evaluation of our inventory. Every piece of equipment is being considered in terms of renewals, what pieces need to be sold, what needs to be kept on, how to make the best use of our inventory. It really comes back to what service level will be for the county.”
During the Sept. 23 budget meeting, Greg Wiens, director of corporate services, presented council with written comments on a number of budget related items, including education taxes. “What is known so far is that the province expects to collect $2.25 billion in education taxes (in 2015), up from $2.10 billion (in 2014),” said Wiens. “What is still unknown is how the county's share of the requisition has changed.”
Councillors will have another budget meeting on Oct. 6.
“At that time we will start to narrow down a bit on the operations side,” said Beattie. “Our goal is to make sure that we have the capital side and the capital projects identified so we can put those out to tender in the new year. That's our goal and it has been for the past number of years. That has served us well in terms of costs.”
The plan is to have the entire budget completed by early spring, “once we've heard from the province because the province of course requisitions for education and that can be a significant impact on our budget,” he said.
Although there are no plans to hold public open houses specifically about the budget, “every budget meeting is a public meeting and anyone is invited to sit in on those meetings,” he said.
