A more than $200,000 surplus that Sundre’s council must now decide how to allocate was largely the result of staff vacancies and turnovers in 2017, elected officials heard last week.
Had the number of municipal employees not fluctuated last year and salaries paid out amounted to what the past council had approved, the budget would instead barely have broken even with a modest roughly $4,000 surplus, said Vic Pirie, director of finance and administration.
During the March 5 meeting, Pirie presented council over the span of the better part of three hours with a detailed report breaking down the municipality’s third quarter financial report for 2017, pointing out along the way numerous highlights. His full report is available online at the municipality’s official website, www.sundre.com, under the Council Meeting Agendas and Minutes tab.
Tax revenues generated last year are expected to come in shy of the approved budget by about $95,000, which was largely the result of an originally anticipated growth in property assessments that not only did not materialize, but actually ended up stalling, said Pirie.
"The budget estimates were based on our assessments growing in 2017 by about one per cent roughly, and in fact it shrank.”
Another factor was a minor adjustment to the mill rate, which had in the budget initially been set to increase by three per cent, whereas council ended up deciding to reduce the rate, he said.
"The biggest adjustment was not in the residential, although there was slight reduction in it. But it came in the reduction in the commercial vacant land, primarily,” which was brought down to about 11 mills from 15, he said.
And while some expenses turned out to be more than what was budgeted, such as for example legislative services, which came in about $16,000 higher than expected, most departments actually ended up with minor and modest surpluses, he said.
"For the budget, we were looking at about an $87 surplus for the year.”
However, accounting for all of the different departments’ surpluses and the shortfalls in revenues, the municipality ended up with a roughly $212,000 surplus, he said, drawing council’s attention to an approximate savings of $208,000 that came in as a result of staff vacancies and transitions.
"Of the $212,000, $208,000 of it comes from savings in salaries and benefits. So if you took out the salary component, the budget was basically a break-even budget — about a $4,000 surplus.”
Administrative staff also sought council’s approval to transfer certain amounts — such as interest gained on unspent funds — from specific departments into their respective reserves. Failure to do so would result in an even larger surplus that would still need to be allocated, he said.
"Only council has the authority to transfer money out of reserves, as well as putting money in.”
Council was keen to see a detailed list of which funds would be transferred into which reserves before making any final decisions.
Administration’s request for decision was received for information and to be brought back with additional details and explanations during last night’s March 12 meeting.
