(File photo/meadowlakeNOW Staff)

By Angela Brown

2024 budget

Meadow Lake council starts 2024 budget deliberation meetings

Oct 16, 2023 | 5:07 PM

Members of Meadow Lake’s city council are sharpening their pencils as they get started on the city’s 2024 budget.

Administration presented a draft of its capital and operating budget at its pre-budget meeting on Saturday.

Mayor Merlin Seymour told meadowlakeNOW the document is in its preliminary stages at this point.

“It’s just starting off of our budget deliberations for the upcoming year,” he said. “We get together with council and our managers from the different departments. They bring the budget requests for the upcoming year. We start going through [the package] to see what we are able to approve, and what we may have to make some changes on what we can’t approve. Saturday was just an overview of what they are looking for.”

Council wants to have the final draft of the budget ready for approval by the end of December.

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Seymour noted administration and management spent the last three to four months putting together the details of its asks.

“Hopefully, we are going to be able to balance things out, and have it passed by the end of the year,” he said.

Seymour explains the budget draft does not show any increase to taxpayers at this point.

“We’ll figure that out at a later point in time,” he added.

If there is a tax increase proposed, that is something that will be looked at closer to the end of the deliberation process.

Seymour said all the asks are important, but “ultimately, we only have so much money to work with. So, we just have to make decisions based on what we have.”

The city’s overall operating budget for the year is roughly around $13 million.

Seymour mentioned the budget details are usually a little different each year.

“You never have the same asks from capital expenditures…,” he said. “And, the operating side is an ongoing one, with everything that falls within the budget, whether it be general government services, … or the fire department or recreation, or any of our water and sewer [needs], and [items] like that.”

Among some of the projects that need to be done in 2024 are more repairs to the fire hall’s roof, repairing some reservoirs, and continuing with paving upgrades.

“We’ll try and do as much as we can based on what we have available for funds,” Seymour said.

At the same time, the city is encouraging Meadow Lake residents to offer their input into the budget process through its website.

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Angela.Brown@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @meadowlakenow