{"id":31464,"date":"2022-06-16T18:58:10","date_gmt":"2022-06-16T22:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=31464"},"modified":"2022-06-23T14:06:14","modified_gmt":"2022-06-23T18:06:14","slug":"council-looks-at-ways-to-engage-residents-in-budget-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/council-looks-at-ways-to-engage-residents-in-budget-process\/","title":{"rendered":"Council looks at ways to engage residents in Budget process"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It\u2019s a municipal decision that directly impacts your bottom line, but is there a lack of interest in the municipal budget process?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was the question Councillors considered last week after a public meeting for residents to provide input on the Town\u2019s 2023 Capital and Operating Budgets attracted zero participants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Councillors met in Council Chambers on Tuesday, June 7, for the public meeting \u2013 which, due to lack of input, lasted less than three minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year will see the introduction of a new multi-year budget cycle, which will set budget targets — including tax increases \u2013 for the next four years, years which are expected to include significant inflation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOver the past year and a half, the Town\u2019s goods and service prices have been subject to significant inflationary pressure as a result of the pandemic and war in Ukraine,\u201d said Jason Gaertner, Manager of Financial Management for the Town of Aurora, in a report to Council. \u201cOverall, inflation for all goods and services has averaged around 5 \u2013 6 per cent. More specifically, the Town\u2019s typical basket of goods and services has been subject to higher inflationary pressures.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Costs related to Parks have seen a rise of approximately 31 per cent, while Roads costs have increased by 29 per cent. Increases are also being reported in the areas of facilities, water, wastewater and stormwater services, and IT services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRecently, the Town has experienced price increases higher than these amounts for some individual awards,\u201d Mr. Gaertner continued. \u201cIn many instances, capital project contract awards are coming in higher than available project capital budget authority. This could lead to requests from staff in 2022 seeking additional capital budget authority to award contracts for active capital projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese recently experienced inflationary price increases will not go away. Rather, the Town\u2019s average cost for these items will have increased for the long-term and be subject to further inflationary pressures. The recent Provincial and Federal budgets project that inflation will return to a more normal pace by 2024, aligning with the Bank of Canada\u2019s overall inflationary target of 2 per cent. The proposed 2023 budget to be presented to Council in December will reflect this increased cost of doing business.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the anticipated increased costs coming down this fall, no members of the public took part in the first public session, leading Councillor John Gallo to question what the Town could do to increase public engagement, including holding more public sessions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to repeat what we just did because there doesn\u2019t seem to be too much value if we can\u2019t get engagement from the public, but I think it is the only public meeting on our calendar,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s not stopping the public from coming to a meeting and expressing their opinion [but] I will leave it out there if anyone (on Council) sees any value in another one later on in the process.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carley Smith, Aurora\u2019s Manager of Corporate Communications, said residents had provided \u201cquite a bit\u201d of feedback through the Town\u2019s Engage Aurora online platform, while, through the same channel, a survey has been launched with an incentive for residents to provide their thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Council agreed that more should be done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe should continue to look at ways to drive engagement and hope for as much participation as possible into the budget process,\u201d said Councillor Michael Thompson. \u201cI would challenge Ms. Smith to come up with some other ideas or thoughts along those avenues to increase participation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Added Councillor Wendy Gaertner: \u201cThere is certainly a significant number of people in Town who do not do \u2018online\u2019 and are not into social media, especially perhaps the older generation. I think it would be a good idea to at least have the opportunity to [engage]\u2026and I would like to make sure there is some\u2026opportunity if someone does want to come to the Council chamber to speak with us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a municipal decision that directly impacts your bottom line, but is there a lack of interest in the municipal budget process? That was the question Councillors considered last week after a public meeting for residents to provide input on the Town\u2019s 2023 Capital and Operating Budgets attracted zero participants. Councillors met in Council Chambers […]<\/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-31464","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\/p3D2k4-8bu","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-26 01:09:14","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\/31464","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=31464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31464\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}