{"id":15627,"date":"2016-10-26T17:22:23","date_gmt":"2016-10-26T21:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=15627"},"modified":"2016-10-26T17:22:23","modified_gmt":"2016-10-26T21:22:23","slug":"town-hall-working-to-reduce-185000-deficit-to-zero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/town-hall-working-to-reduce-185000-deficit-to-zero\/","title":{"rendered":"Town Hall working to reduce $185,000 deficit to zero"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

As Council gets ready to resume deliberations over Aurora\u2019s 2017 Budget next month, municipal staff are working towards getting a projected year-end budget deficit of just over $185,000 down to zero.
\nWith 2016 drawing to a close, Town Treasurer Dan Elliott says the Town is facing the shortfall, which accounts for 0.3 of one per cent of the tax rate this year, and is looking at alternative ways of bringing that down.
\nAccording to a report before Council this week, and presented to Councillors at the Committee level last Tuesday from Mr. Elliott, the deficit is coming in alongside with a surplus of $815,700 of money set aside for utility operations.
\n\u201cStaff will continue to strive to minimize this deficit before year end,\u201d he said. \u201cIf required, any operating budget deficit that remains at fiscal year-end will be offset by an equivalent reduced contribution of excess supplementary tax revenues to reserves.\u201d
\nSupplementary taxes are revenues taken in by the Town as part of current or previous year but were not accounted for in the assessment roll at the beginning of the year.
\n\u201cDuring the 2016 budget development cycle, a methodology change was discussed with [the Executive Leadership Team (ELT)] and Council and ultimately implemented for the 2016 budget,\u201d said Mr. Elliott on changes to how the Town budgets for supplementary tax revenues. \u201cCouncil is well aware that we are currently experiencing a large spike in our development activity, which is expected to decline sharply in the next few years, and is expected to settle to all-time lows for the long-term.\u201d
\nWhen Councillors took a first pass on Mr. Elliott\u2019s report last week, some were keen to highlight the fact efforts are being made to make a significant dent at the $185,200 figure.
\n\u201cI don\u2019t want that to be the headline of anything because that will be right-sized by the end of the year,\u201d said Councillor Harold Kim, noting the changes to ease up on including supplementary revenue into the annual budget. \u201cWith any changes, there is a transition period. It is not going to work perfectly, but I daresay this year the budgeting from staff has been relatively good. We\u2019re getting ahead of the curve so that we are fiscally more conservative. As a result, I think our budget situation in Aurora now, and in future years, are in good shape.\u201d
\nCouncillor Michael Thompson, on the other hand, said if residents keep hearing the word \u201cdeficit\u201d they have to know what Council is doing to \u201cminimize our spending\u201d and working to reduce the deficit.
\n\u201cNot just what actions we have taken, but what actions we will continue to take because I am sure everybody around this table recognizes we have a fiduciary responsibility to take this very seriously and the word \u2018deficit\u2019 concerns us all,\u201d he added.
\nWhile CAO Doug Nadorozny said there hasn\u2019t been as much movement as they would like, conversations have been \u201cactive\u201d among the ELT.
\n\u201cThere are a number of things we have employed and will employ throughout the remainder of the year to further reduce that $185,000 number,\u201d said Mr. Nadorozny. \u201cWe have delayed the hiring of some vacancies to create a little bit more gap. Even though there is already a budgeted amount for gap, we are hopefully going to exceed that temporarily as a reaction to the situation we\u2019re in right now. We remain confident that we will further reduce that number and achieve zero.\u201d
\nThis raised a concern with Councillor Wendy Gaertner who said while she is glad they are moving in that direction, spending needed this year should not be pushed off until 2017 because that could cause problems later on.
\nAt the end of the day, for Council, it was all about making sure enough money remains in reserves to account for the future. Although not in favour of the idea himself, Mayor Geoff Dawe asked whether the $815,700 surplus in the utilities budget could be used to offset the deficit, which Mr. Elliott said was against budgeting principles in that it had to go back to reserves.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re looking at changing how we do our budgeting, we\u2019re looking at right sizing and that has an impact. To use a horrible phrase, it is short term pain for long term gain. Nobody wants to see the D word. I think Council needs to take all those factors into consideration.\u201d
\nAdded Councillor Gaertner: \u201cThere were nine years of a zero per cent tax increase that compromised our reserves and we are now in a position where we have to build those reserves up. We really don\u2019t have a choice.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Council gets ready to resume deliberations over Aurora\u2019s 2017 Budget next month, municipal staff are working towards getting a projected year-end budget deficit of just over $185,000 down to zero.<\/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-15627","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\/p3D2k4-443","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 19:35:13","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\/15627","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=15627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15627\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}