Town council has decided not to bring the 2013 budget to the public this month but will instead seek additional feedback from citizens at a final open house on Jan. 10.
In doing so, council will carry on the business of the town with an interim budget – last year's approved operating budget – until it gathers more information from the public next month.
The decision for the process was finalized at council's regular meeting on Dec. 3.
“Council feels it is very important to ensure we get a large group of engagement from the public, and seeing how it is Christmastime, it is quite difficult to expect people to find time to come and really take a good hard look at it, digest it and give feedback,” said Mayor Annette Clews, admitting it was late in the process to hold another open house. “We have actually made the decision that we going to do an interim operating budget, which is last year's approved operating budget and have public input to make sure that people understand and are on track with the way council is going.”
Clews said council is no longer considering making a formal public presentation of the 2013 budget before Christmas as it wants more “formalization” in the process.
She said council will prepare for the Jan. 10 open house with informational brochures for the public to “read and digest, and give us feedback.”
Clews noted council has already collected significant public feedback on this year's budget process through surveys and information gathered at last September's Sundre Petroleum Operators Group (SPOG) industry Trade Fair.
“We tried to incorporate that into this budget. There will be feedback on whether or not people see that we are making the right direction based on their previous input,” said Clews.
Dean Pickering, the town's chief administrative officer, said administration has been working on the budget since he arrived in Sundre last September. He said council was presented with the first major operations budget on the weekend of Nov. 17 and 18.
“Council gave us a ballpark to get within. They said, ‘We want you to be under five per cent. Three would be our ideal target, but we want you to be under five per cent and that includes any reserves we set aside, any operations,'” said Pickering, adding the budget process has moved forward “smoothly.”
“Our first kick at it everybody puts their wish list together and we had some work to do. In that weekend we basically went through 80 per cent of the major items and started making cuts to our wish list to get them back down.”
Pickering said there were leftover budget items from the November discussions but those were “finished off” in the first weekend of this month.
As with Clews, Pickering said further public input, such as the final open house on Jan. 10, is essential for the process to move forward to its conclusion.
Pickering said he had hoped to bring the town budget to council for first reading by Dec. 17 but added council will now approve last year's budget and wait until the Jan. 10 open house feedback and bring the budget forward to the second meeting in January.
He said the altered budget process was not the result of council or administration needing more time to work on any particular pressing or important issue.
Pickering said based on the public priorities collected at the SPOG fair, along with the ones council worked on during the budget process, effort was aimed at items affecting recreation, economic development, health and safety.
