{"id":14952,"date":"2016-08-10T17:19:18","date_gmt":"2016-08-10T21:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=14952"},"modified":"2016-08-10T17:19:18","modified_gmt":"2016-08-10T21:19:18","slug":"next-municipal-budget-needs-to-make-up-for-860000-imbalance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/next-municipal-budget-needs-to-make-up-for-860000-imbalance\/","title":{"rendered":"Next municipal budget needs to make up for $860,000 \u201cimbalance\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Council will get back down to regular business next month and, when they do, they will face 860,000 challenges.<\/p>\n

The 2017 Budget Process is set to get underway this fall and, while Council Chambers have been quieter over the summer, municipal staff have been looking at ways to address $860,000 worth of shortcomings in several areas.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll together, we have about $860,000 of a permanent budget adjustment that needs to be made,\u201d said Dan Elliott, Treasurer for the Town of Aurora at Town\u2019s Finance Advisory Committee (FAC). \u201cWe\u2019re trying to strategize around our table how we are going to achieve that with the budget directions that Council has approved for 2017.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last month, Council approved a number of directives for staff when it comes to preparing next year\u2019s budget, including a municipal increase pegged at inflation \u2013 currently standing at 2.1 per cent \u2013 plus one additional per cent to boost reserves. <\/p>\n

Over time, however, some departments \u2013 including Infrastructure & Environmental Services (IES) and Parks & Recreation, have had unaddressed shortfalls. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe FAC heard from Parks & Rec and from IES that there are a number of areas where their budgets had been understated for a number of years and this is resulting in them running deficits in their operating groups despite their efforts to try and save and conserve,\u201d said Mr. Elliott. \u201cIES is running deficits in the areas of salaries because they have too much attributed to water costs when the guys actually don\u2019t do that work in water, they do that on roads, so it is charged and then there will be an overspend in the budget.\u201d<\/p>\n

Deficits are also coming to light when it comes to energy use and utilities, said Mr. Elliott, despite a costly project begun in the last year\u2019s budget to overhaul Aurora\u2019s street lighting system to LED lights in an effort to save money. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey have also got part-time staff at their facilities, which is underfunded,\u201d he continued. \u201cThey have then turned around and said for some changes they are doing internally they are going to save money for a net offset. They are looking for almost a half a million dollar budgetary step up, net of their savings, which [comes to] $480,000.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Parks and Rec, they\u2019ve got things like their part-time and their contracts for their programming delivery that have been understated by about $150,000 each and an area on utilities as well for their park lighting which is about $310,000 total. They have some minor savings to bring it down to $290,000. We looked around in the legal department, some shuffling around, and another $10,000 that historically needs to be bolstered with some permanent funding and then we also have a decline in our penalties on tax revenues, so another $75,000 there.\u201d<\/p>\n

When FAC met at the end of July, this financial discrepancy raised questions from Mayor Geoff Dawe and Councillor Michael Thompson, who sit on the committee with Councillors Harold Kim and Tom Mrakas. Although Mr. Elliott referred to the discrepancy as \u201cunderfunding\u201d, Mayor Dawe questioned whether it would be more accurate to call it an \u201cunderstatement.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way I see it, these things have been historically underfunded for a period of years where there has been known discrepancies,\u201d replied Aurora CAO Doug Nadorozny. \u201cBecause supplementals (supplementary taxes: money that flows into Town coffers mid-year for a variety of reasons, including re-assessment) in some of the other areas have been consistently high, there wasn\u2019t a burning need to figure out exactly what the right number should be to get it bang on because we have had that cushion. Council has recently stated that they want to get off those supplementals, not assuming those supplementals are going to come forward \u2013 because they eventually [will fall off].<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is that transition period between relying on supplementals and getting of supplementals that you have to get your numbers really good and really accurate so you are budgeting appropriately. In a couple of the areas that have been identified, it is clear that over time a misalignment has been allowed to continue because there wasn\u2019t the pressure to fix it. Now, we\u2019re drilling down to figure out what those are, but we are also pushing the departments to find some of the savings alone so that it isn\u2019t at the expense of supplementals or of new revenue that we can figure out some ways to cover those differences.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drilling further into the department, he said they found real \u201cimbalances,\u201d a word Mayor Dawe said he \u201caccepted\u201d over \u201cunderfunded.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Council will get back down to regular business next month and, when they do, they will face 860,000 challenges.<\/p>\n

The 2017 Budget Process is set to get underway this fall and, while Council Chambers have been quieter over the summer, municipal staff have been looking at ways to address $860,000 worth of shortcomings in several areas.<\/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_feature_clip_id":0,"_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-14952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-3Ta","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-31 21:22:02","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14952","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=14952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}