{"id":1044,"date":"2013-03-26T12:53:50","date_gmt":"2013-03-26T16:53:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=1044"},"modified":"2013-04-02T14:04:49","modified_gmt":"2013-04-02T18:04:49","slug":"weaning-off-hydro-money-gives-some-councillors-growing-pains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/weaning-off-hydro-money-gives-some-councillors-growing-pains\/","title":{"rendered":"Weaning off Hydro money gives some Councillors growing pains"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Aurora\u2019s 2013 budget is approved on Tuesday, the Town will take one further step in weaning itself off interest from the Town\u2019s Hydro Reserve account.<\/p>\n

Since the Town sold Aurora Hydro, much of the interest collected from the $33 million pot had been skimmed off and put back in the Town\u2019s budgets to help lessen the direct impact on taxpayers. When these funds were initially established, however, this was intended to maintain a balance in the books to account for the shortfall of incoming revenue from the municipal power company.<\/p>\n

But the initial intention was to eventually wean the municipality off the funds.<\/p>\n

Other Councils had reduced this number in increments, but the current Council has not, until this year. <\/p>\n

Early in the budget process, Council decided to finally get on with it and reduce the amount taken from the Hydro Reserve interest to cushion the tax blow by $100,000. Proponents of the move, particularly Councillor Michael Thompson, who made the initial suggestion, said the continual skimming off of the interest from the Hydro Reserve Account would ultimately reduce its purchasing power as Council has yet to decide just what to do with the nearly $34 million in the account. <\/p>\n

When the budget came up for committee approval last week, however, Mayor Geoffrey Dawe suggested it would be worth taking a second look at the move before the document is approved by Council this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have had discussions about reducing our dependence on the interests from the hydro reserves by $100,000 and while I fully appreciate Councillor Thompson\u2019s point of view, I don\u2019t necessarily support them,\u201d he said, wondering the impact of putting off the deduction \u201cuntil we get a better sense of what to do with the hydro money\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cI fully appreciate the point that when you\u2019re taking interest out you\u2019re eroding the capital and there is no doubt merit, but it might make sense to postpone this for a year just until we get a sense of what, if anything, we\u2019re going to do with the hydro money.\u201d<\/p>\n

The postponement, however, failed to gain any traction at the committee level. <\/p>\n

\u201cI agreed that taking interest and not putting it back in reduces the purchasing power of our hydro fund,\u201d said Councillor John Abel.<\/p>\n

Added Councillor Thompson: \u201cWe need to be fiscally prudent and follow these wishes that were established before, and like Councils before, make that effort to wean ourselves off those funds. I know we have a lot of challenges, but I wish it could have been more than $100,000 myself. It is a start, and I would like to see us make an effort in our second year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similar concerns about the erosion of the funds were also expressed during the meeting from Town Treasurer Dan Elliott.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy doing that we are preserving the purchasing power of those funds, which I have expressed concerns that they are eroding if we continue to rely on that interest,\u201d he said. \u201cMoving away from that reliance on the interest will help preserve the purchasing power of those funds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the past two years, the majority of the discussion surrounding the hydro funds have centred on what to do with the nearly $34 million in the bank. Suggestions have raised from re-investing it back into the system to lessen the tax rate to building something \u201cspectacular\u201d for future generations.<\/p>\n

The Town ran a survey this fall and concluding in the winter, over 50 per cent of the 180 respondents said they wanted lower taxes. At the time when the results came in, several Councillors agreed that it may have been a mistake putting this option on the table for the public\u2019s consideration in the middle of the furore over the initially proposed 8.2 per cent tax hike, which has since boiled down to 3.42 per cent. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think there was any appetite amongst those of us at Council to move forward with that 8 per cent tax hike and I think that skews the results that came back through the community consultation,\u201d said Councillor Thompson. \u201cHad it been more reflective of where we want to go with our taxes or what we would try to achieve, I think you would likely see different results one way or another.\u201d<\/p>\n

Councillor Chris Ballard said he shared his concerns and at the end of the day it was akin to the adage of \u201cbe careful what you wish for.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBe careful asking a question if you\u2019re not going to do something with the answer,\u201d he said. \u201cWe raise people\u2019s expectations that you\u2019re asking and then we don\u2019t do anything with it. I think if we got taxes down to zero and asked the question people would still say they want their taxes lowered. They would say distribute the $32 million amongst the residents of Aurora. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think it is a lesson to all of us that we better be very careful about asking questions if we\u2019re not going to act on the answers and think very carefully about what questions we do ask.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir When Aurora\u2019s 2013 budget is approved on Tuesday, the Town will take one further step in weaning itself off interest from the Town\u2019s Hydro Reserve account. Since the Town sold Aurora Hydro, much of the interest collected from the $33 million pot had been skimmed off and put back in the Town\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-gQ","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 13:55:49","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}