By Matt Kelly

‘Modest, conservative budget’ for Battleford

Jun 27, 2016 | 7:08 PM

It’s a budget a couple months in the making, but the Town of Battleford’s 2016 budget has officially approved and passed.

The town’s chief administrative officer John Enns-Wind called the 2016 budget a “modest, conservative” one as plans are already in place to start to look at the next year’s budget.

“We wanted this year to be a flexible as possible for next year, because we want to develop a long term capital plan and that’s what that first meeting is about. So we wanted some flexibility to be able to do that as well as look after some current needs,” Enns-Wind said.

The town mill rates are not going up and are staying the same as they were in the previous year, but Enns-Wind said councillors approved an increase in the base tax.

“So a base tax on land is about $325 and people would have formerly known that as the minimum tax, well that’s now called the base tax,” Enns-Wind said. “Then the improvement tax, I think it is around $640 or something like that. So the base tax has gone up.”

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In addition, the town is using less of its reserves this year.

Enns-Wind said capital projects approved in the budget include road work already underway.

“The big ones would be the overlay on First Ave., the 29th St. 300 block work that’s going on. Some people might say IT (information technology) is big, it’s over $200,000. We’re buying some equipment” Enns-Wind said. “We’ve just tried to increase productivity. We’ve got a new leadership team here and we’re still assessing things.”

Other capital programs included in the budget include equipment investment, improvement to the road leading to the Battlefords District Care Centre and the introduction of curbside recycling.

Enns-Wind added discussions surrounding the funding of the river valley are ongoing after government funding was cut in the provincial budget.

Matt Kelly is battlefordsNOW’s town municipal affairs and community reporter. He can be reached at mkelly@jpbg.ca. Concerns regarding this story can be addressed to Geoff at 306-446-6397.