{"id":11109,"date":"2015-06-24T13:19:00","date_gmt":"2015-06-24T17:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=11109"},"modified":"2015-06-24T13:19:00","modified_gmt":"2015-06-24T17:19:00","slug":"budget-numbers-concerning-for-councillors-municipal-staff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/budget-numbers-concerning-for-councillors-municipal-staff\/","title":{"rendered":"Budget numbers \u201cconcerning\u201d for Councillors, municipal staff"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Aurora\u2019s 2014 fiscal year closed with a budget surplus of nearly $790,000 \u2013 and while that might seem like a positive for many people, had a few unforeseen circumstances not seen a sudden influx of cash into Town coffers, the year would have ended in a $431,200 deficit. <\/p>\n

These were the numbers presented to Councillors last week by Dan Elliott, Treasurer for the Town of Aurora. Despite the year ending in a surplus, the potential of hitting a budget deficit raised alarm bells around the table and led to calls for various municipal departments to be more mindful of the budgets allocated to them.<\/p>\n

\u201cOverall the Town\u2019s municipal operations budget closed the year with a surplus of $787,840,\u201d said Mr. Elliott in his report to Council. \u201cHowever\u2026the corporations\u2019 year-end surplus position was the result of four significant unplanned revenue windfalls attributable to 2C lands development driven fee revenues, an GST rebate tax credit refund, supplementary tax surplus variances, and investment income.<\/p>\n

\u201cHad these fortuitous revenues not occurred, the corporation would have finished the fiscal year in a deficit position of $431,200, suggesting that despite spending curtailments by staff, the corporation\u2019s approved operating budget was insufficient in meeting its core operating requirements in 2014.\u201d<\/p>\n

2014\u2019s Budget was initially approved at $53,470,100, but Council subsequently upped the ante by $450,100, noted Mr. Elliott. While most municipal departments ended the year in a favourable position, one of the biggest deficits was in the area of Infrastructure and Environmental Services, which ended the year at 5.1 per cent over-budget, attributed to salaries, road operations, and unplanned expenses when it came to the repair and replacement of equipment and other components of municipal facilities.<\/p>\n

By the time these numbers hit the Committee level last week, Mr. Elliott said these unplanned revenues \u201cmore or less bailed us out\u201d, a fact that was \u201cconcerning.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGoing into the 2015 Budget, we saw some substantive budget reductions and so it does not bode well necessarily if we stay on a similar track for this year, although we know because of supplementary revenues, we\u2019re going to have some of those fortuitous revenues again. We\u2019re not doing that deliberately in our budget process because we know it is not a sustainable revenue source. I am concerned that it appears the expenditures budgets are beginning to be very, very tight\u2026not quite sufficient enough to operate the municipality in the manner to which we are used to having it run and operated. <\/p>\n

\u201cDespite the efforts of my colleagues around the table in trying to constrain our expenditures and trying hard to stick to budgets, we have things like snow events, weather events, facility repairs that sneak up on us. These are all things that add up together. Fortunately, we\u2019re able to end the year in a black ink scenario, but if it weren\u2019t for those fortuitous revenues we would be in the red and it is concerning to me. We have to be careful.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was also concerning to Councillors who said Aurora cannot keep relying on these sudden windfalls.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not comfortable with relying on fortuitous revenues coming in,\u201d said Councillor Michael Thompson, questioning whether their financial system would be able to report quarterly, or semi-annually on where these expenditures and revenues lie at any given point in the year. \u201cA couple of times we have seen these reports at the end of the year get all rolled up and I think it would be helpful for Council to have more up-to-date information as we progress through the year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Updates to the reporting system are currently being looked at, responded Mr. Elliott, and an updated forecast is in the works. This is not a fool-proof system, however, he noted, as things can change every day. For instance, in last October\u2019s forecast, the GST rebate information became clear just the next day, producing a \u201cbig\u201d variance. <\/p>\n

Councillor Harold Kim also asked for more up-to-date and frequent reporting as this is a frequent occurrence.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like Michael Corleone in Godfather III \u2013 just when you try to get out it kind of drags you back in,\u201d he said of the budget process. \u201cThis is not a one-off incident. I know we have the Finance Advisory Committee and we\u2019re going to move to a multi-year budget where we can smooth things out. <\/p>\n

\u201cI trust with our newly formed committee, we\u2019re going to have to perhaps go line by line and form that baseline to ensure that we don\u2019t have the access or shortfalls we can amortize over five years\u2026 We just need to do a better job going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aurora\u2019s 2014 fiscal year closed with a budget surplus of nearly $790,000 \u2013 and while that might seem like a positive for many people, had a few unforeseen circumstances not seen a sudden influx of cash into Town coffers, the year would have ended in a $431,200 deficit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_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},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-2Tb","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-07 12:07:22","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\/11109","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=11109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}