City presents first part of 2017 budget

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“The Killdeer subdivision being completed is totally something that’s necessary and required in the city,” he said. “It gives us the opportunity to grow and more choices – before you had Fairview and there was not much other choice, but now there’s a couple places you can go and build a new property.”

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The department will also focus on the city’s downtown in the coming years, adding to the successful art alley mural and other efforts to spruce up downtown and support businesses.

He said a highlight for leisure services in 2017 will be the addition of a new position and the alteration of another. The new position is going to mostly be involved in scheduling for the various operations, and a gallery position is going to be changed to focus more on arts education rather than just administrative support.

“This will free up some of our really skilled people away from more of an administrative function more into what they’re really good at, which is programming and innovation and creativity,” he said.

Puffalt said the budget is on schedule so far and the Nov. 30 meeting showed how well their process works.

“The scrutiny that we do, by the time [the budget] gets to council there’s really no question to it and if there is a question we can answer it, we can really drill it down,” he said. “That’s the level of detail we need to be responsible stewards of taxpayer money.”

The next meetings are on Dec. 5, where council will look at operations, waste management, water and sewer departments, and Dec. 7, where they will look at the protective and general government services departments.

Puffalt said part of the discussion Monday will be about increases in property tax and utilities, which he said are fairly standard increases in municipalities across the province.

The budget deliberations are open to the public and the draft 2017 budget is available online for residents to look over.

Sarah Rae is battlefordsNOW’s court and crime reporter. She can be reached at Sarah.Rae@jpbg.ca or tweet her @sarahjeanrae.