City of North Battleford Finance Director Steve Brown presented the 2020 proposed budget at the deliberation meeting Monday. (file photo/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Angela Brown

Budget 2020

Proposed budget continues city’s aim to reduce costs

Dec 3, 2019 | 5:57 PM

The City of North Battleford’s proposed 2020 budget may reflect a two per cent increase each in taxes and utility rates but Finance Director Steve Brown said it could have been worse, without the city’s hard work in finding savings to reduce costs.

As directed by council, administration managed to find close to half a million dollars in savings in 2019.

“We are certainly a lot better off than we were 12 months ago,” Brown said when he presented a general overview of the proposed budget at Monday’s deliberation meeting. “We’ve made a lot of changes, some of them pretty drastic, but the budget document we put before council tonight shows the changes have been reflected for the plan for 2020.”

Brown said he embarked on the 2020 budget with the same vigilance to look for efficiencies and to take a “cost effective” approach.

“As I keep telling people, you have got to look at the nickels; you can’t just look for the dollars,” he said of his modus operandi to find any savings whenever possible.

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Brown said the proposed two per cent tax and utility increase is “a lot better” than it was for the 2019 budget, when the property tax increase was four per cent and the utility rate increase 4.5 per cent.

Brown stated in his report the city has been “coming off a very challenging 2019 whereby the city had to reduce staffing levels to align with revenue challenges and continue to challenge operations to improve.”

To deal with reduced revenue, the city looked for savings in operations, and managed to save money in a number of ways: by moving to a new insurance provider, through finding reductions in its supplies purchasing, reducing fuel costs, and looking for other efficiencies.

Brown said in his report, reduced revenues and other challenges created significant financial pressures for the city.

As his report states, the city incurred lost revenue from property tax appeals, fire service contracts and regional revenues at the landfill that impacted its overall financial state by over $2 million.

As a result, the city has worked to reduce its costs signficantly and looked to cut costs to help offset the loss.

Brown said the city continues to search for more cost-saving measures. The city will also start to allocate reserve transfers within existing budget documents to ensure money is set aside for future projects.

The finance director also said the city has made considerable improvements in bringing down its debt load as part of its work to improve the books.

Following the presentation, Mayor Ryan Bater commended Brown and administration’s efforts.

“You had half a million dollars in financial improvements,” Bater said. “That was a big part of the charge council gave administration last year coming out of the budget. We have been getting updates throughout the year, but to see it all here comprehensively – that is an impressive target to have met. With only $3,000 short, that is really good. That’s a lot of hard work.”

The proposed budget is available on the city’s website.

angela.brown@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow