Olds town council has recommended changes to the way Parkland Regional Library does its budgeting process after the town faced an additional $7,185 requisition amount for library services.
The recommendation to either change the library's membership agreement with municipalities or the library's budgeting process was made at the town council meeting on April 22.
In addition to recommending changes to the way Parkland conducts its business, town council also agreed to pay the additional amount, on top of the $52,765 the town was budgeted to pay for regional library services for 2013.
Even though council agreed to pay the requisition, many councillors thought the process used to arrive at the amount was flawed.
The PRL board set the requisition amount of $52,765 for 2013 in November of 2012 based on a 2010 population figure of 7,248 for Olds.
In January of this year, however, PRL sent an updated invoice to the town based on a 2011 federal census population tally for Olds of 8,235, which the library received from Alberta Municipal Affairs in December 2012.
“The main issue is (Alberta) Municipal Affairs doesn't update their statistics until after Sept. 1 and then they publish it late November, early December,” said Coun. Harvey Walsh, former chair of the PRL board. “Parkland doesn't have access to those statistics and so their membership agreement (with municipalities) says they'll use the most current available population numbers.”
Walsh said part of the issue is that PRL sends out its forthcoming year's budget to municipalities for ratification in September using the most current population figures it has at that time. It then gets updated figures in December, but the timeframe to modify the budget has essentially passed at that point.
“That membership agreement says they must submit (the budget) to the municipalities by Nov. 1, which doesn't give them a lot of time (to ratify the budget). So that's an issue that has to be worked out,” he said.
“That's why we're taking our resolution to the Parkland Regional Library board to see if this can be worked out. We weren't really arguing about the money, it was the process,” he said.
Ron Sheppard, director of PRL, said because the PRL is made up of 65 municipalities and the board doesn't approve the preliminary budget until September each year, it's a tight timeframe to get the required two-thirds of the member municipalities with two-thirds of the population to ratify the PRL budget by the end of the year.
“It's a tight timeframe and we have at least three fiscal years we have to consider,” he said, noting PRL and municipalities work on January to December fiscal years, while the provincial government has an April to March fiscal year and the school divisions have a September to August fiscal year, which means up until September, everything the PRL does during its budget process is based on estimates.
Based on the membership agreement with municipalities, PRL must bill using the latest population figures. This year, Sheppard said, 34 communities in the PRL system saw population declines, so it was imperative to get the latest population results.
Sheppard also said that in order to change any aspects of the membership agreement, the board needs 13 months notice of the changes and the changes would need to be ratified by communities representing two-thirds of the population. If changes were to take effect quicker than that, 100 per cent of the membership would need to agree to the changes.
