By Greg Higgins

NB hopes other municipalities will help fund services

May 12, 2017 | 12:00 PM

The City of North Battleford is collecting data to find out how many out of city municipalities use its leisure services in hopes they will help out with funding.

Since the cuts in the provincial budget were announced, North Battleford was left with a $1.4 million shortfall in its own budget. In an attempt to make up for the deficit, city administration is exploring every option it can, including charging surrounding municipalities for the services the city provides. 

According to city manager, Jim Puffalt, it isn’t fair for residents outside of North Battleford to be able to use facilities without putting any money towards them because the people of North Battleford are funding those services, whether they use them or not.

“With leisure services we have a 50 per cent cost recovery guideline, which is fairly consistent through Western Canada,” Puffalt said. “The other 50 per cent comes from property tax payers. People of North Battleford pay money through their property tax to keep leisure facilities in operation.”

Puffalt said people outside of the city do not pay additional taxes or have any of their taxes fund leisure services in North Battleford. He added it was unfair and something the city couldn’t afford to do anymore.

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The city manager said the waste management facility works in the same way. Anyone from outside North Battleford dropping garbage off pays an additional 30 per cent.

Puffalt hopes municipalities will agree to help out with leisure services because he doesn’t want to I.D. people from out of town individually.

“We really don’t want to get to that point because it is really hard on people,” Puffalt said. “If you’re sending your kids to come swimming and we’re going to say ‘where are you from?’ Administratively that is very difficult to do and I think it causes a lot of issues to our customers. We’d much rather approach the municipalities.”

The last thing Puffalt said he wanted was for a classroom of kids from a North Battleford school to go to the CUPlex on a field trip and have one kid from out of town not bring enough money for the additional cost.

“So because the kid didn’t bring an extra 30 cents it means he can’t swim, or has to watch from the side? That’s not fair and we don’t want to do that,” Puffalt said.

The city’s plan is to figure out what percentage of usage each surrounding municipality accounts for each North Battleford leisure service. Puffalt gave the example of the Aquatic Centre. If 10 per cent of the users at the centre are from a surrounding municipality, he would like that municipality to help out with costs.

Puffalt hopes administration will have the data they need collected by the end of the fall to present to council and other municipalities. 

Greg.higgins@jpbg.ca

On Twitter @realgreghiggins