Sylvie Paillard
spaillard@squamishchief.com
District of Squamish council is starting the public portion of its 2006 budget discussions with a significant deficit in its core budget and a "wish list" from staff for $2 million more in spending, including several new staff positions.
Representatives of the District of Squamish's 12 departments filed into city hall council chambers Monday (Feb. 13) to outline their budgetary needs for the next five years.
The proposed core budget currently shows total revenues of $28.7 million and proposed total spending of just under $32.3 million, for a general fund deficit of $3.5 million. Amendments to the budget show additional revenue of $381,000, mainly from building permits and development charges, plus another $2.4 million in spending for a total deficit of $5.2 million.
However, the budget includes just under $3 million in capital spending which council can choose to amortize over the next few years, meaning the District's operational deficit is somewhere between $585,000 and $2.6 million before it contemplates capital costs, spending cuts or property tax increases. (The proposed budget is based on a zero increase in property tax revenue from 2005 levels.)
Council has until the end of April to turn in a balanced budget for approval by the provincial government. Municipalities cannot run deficits under provincial law.
On the revenue side, the budget projects no net increase in property taxes from new inventory - newly taxable properties coming on the market in 2006 - after showing a gain of more than $1 million in that category over the past three years - due to a change in the classification of the Quest University lands in the Garibaldi Highlands, said Mayor Ian Sutherland.
"The housing area for the university that was previously classified as commercial lands is now classified as residential, so that makes a decrease," he said. "So that makes a big hit this year on the amount of inventory. Most years we have a new inventory of around $500,000 and $600,000, this year we actually have around $200,000."
The loss is slightly mitigated by a $316,000 increase in tax revenue from a Canadian Hydro project above Valleycliffe which added value to its property with recent improvements.
In its five-year plan, council is anticipating 2.5 per cent more revenue from property taxes in 2007 and 5 per cent increases in 2008, 2009 and 2010 fuelled by new inventory.
The budget does not project a $2 million loss in taxes anticipated from the Woodfibre shutdown because the district fully expects that the land will soon be occupied, according to Sutherland.
"Right now in the books Woodfibre is still down as being what it is because all indications are there will be an industrial user on that site going forward, so until we actually know what's going to happen, we're not going to play with the numbers," he said. Meanwhile, council faces considerable spending requests with every department saying it needs the money for better customer service and to keep up with the town's growth.
Numerous departments have requested new staff. Chief Administrative Officer Kim Anema said that the district has trouble recruiting and retaining staff because current salaries don't balance out with the cost of living and housing in Squamish.A total of 10 new positions have been requested including an administrative services property agent ($58,000), a trails co-ordinator ($36,000), two planners ($42,500 each) and an environmental technician ($45,000). The total value of new staff salaries requested in the budget is $440,000 in addition to increases in existing salaries.
"Right now we're a community of probably 16,000 people with the growth and the workload of a community of 25,000," said Sutherland. "We're kind of going through that period right now where we have to invest for the future. The whole issue of customer service came out as a high priority for everybody. From all different points of view, council bought into and initiated the concept that our job is to serve the public in the most efficient way possible."
The RCMP department is asking for three new officers and one civilian investigative statistician among its overall increase of $327,600. The District also faces a major increase in policing costs in 2007, with its share of RCMP costs growing to 90 per cent from 70 per cent when the next census confirms Squamish's population has exceeded 15,000 people.
Planning representative Cameron Chalmers said his department needs a $533,000 increase, and included is the cost of two new planners and a planning secretary ($113,000). But the amount is offset by revenue from fees collected on development projects, said Sutherland, including the Oceanfront and Interfor applications for rezoning, which alone totaled $281,000. "Some people may want to invest in new projects like developments and businesses now, but they might now be as keen to do that in say 2011," said Sutherland. "So maybe that extra planner is badly needed because the opportunity is now and people won't wait two or three years for an application to go through."
The IT Department is also asking for more than $500,000 annually for on-going improvements such as laying fibre for a network infrastructure that would include an upgrade in the monitoring and maintenance of water, sewer and general control systems. Another chunk of money would go to mapping or location-based data and the main district IT program.
But the municipality faces spending increases across the board, and a district insurance increase of $93,000 is just one example, said Sutherland. Council now faces the task of prioritizing the town's needs for the next five years.
"One of the challenges of the budget is trying to find what works for everybody," said Sutherland. "I think we all recognize that we have a unique opportunity with what's going on in the community now and with 2010 on the horizon, so I think overall the priority is to maximize he opportunities that we have before us."
