Skip to content

Finance chair frustrated with some councillors as budget talks get underway

Service cuts could be on the way as city looks to close $13 million gap in operating budget
Mike Jakubo-preferred-crop
Ward 7 Coun. Mike Jakubo. (Supplied)

Early discussions on Greater Sudbury's 2021 budget and two year financial plan have begun as the city's finance and administration committee got its first look at the plan on Aug. 11.

In addition to getting an early glimpse at a plan that calls for a property tax increase of up to 3.9 per cent and a water/wastewater rate increase of no more than 4.8 per cent, the committee also received a long-term financial plan update from general manager of corporate services, Kevin Fowke.

Finance and administration committee chair Mike Jakubo says the long-term plan paints a rather positive picture and not the doom and gloom that some may think is on the horizon.

"The long-term financial plan really spelled out how the city is in a very healthy financial state," said Jakubo. "We have a very good footing on which to be addressing the whole COVID pandemic and those increased costs and we're on track based on what the plan says."

The early look at the budget direction for the coming year is typically done in May, but with extenuating circumstances due to COVID-19, the discussions were pushed into August.

"Really this is an opportunity to give staff direction to say 'we want you to work towards this number' that's not necessarily that it's going to be what the budget increase is going to be when we finally pass the budget, but it gives staff an idea of what kind of ballpark we're looking in," said Jakubo.

In presenting the report, CAO Ed Archer outlined a $629 million operating budget, with $302 million funded through the property tax levy. Some significant budget changes being forecast at this time are transit revenues coming in $1.6 million lower than forecast for 2021, and leisure services revenues seeing a reduction of roughly $2.3 million.

While the Aug. 11 meeting was little more than an early look at the numbers that staff is recommending in terms of property tax increase, water/wastewater rates, user fees and more, it didn't stop some lively discussion among councillors.

Ward 1 Coun. Mark Signoretti spoke out against the proposed 3.9-per-cent tax increase, asking that staff look internally for savings rather than looking to the taxpayer to close the gap.

"I would like staff to go back and try looking at management salaries, why do we always have to go to service levels? We could look at attrition and if we think this is going to last a couple years we can't keep increasing the budget more and more," said Signoretti.

"We know that COVID is not just for this year, it's multiple years and my concern is why are we increasing management salaries? We're not decreasing staffing levels, we talk about police, I'd like to look at CGS and the number of employees and our population growth hasn't increased but we keep adding staff members at management level so I would like a review of management level salaries and the number of managers we have compared to other municipalities of our size."

Jakubo believes that some councillors would not have accepted any type of increase larger than zero and took the opportunity to air their pet peeves when the report was brought to the committee.

"I had to go after (Coun. Signoretti) pretty hard on that one because he launched a pretty big attack against our management staff, which is not the bigger numbers in terms of staff numbers and yet they hold all the responsibility for managing an organization throughout the pandemic," said Jakubo.

"You have other councillors who don't understand why the costs to the city increase every year, they don't understand that we have a collective bargaining agreement with built in steps in every year of the agreement where salaries and benefits increase and they're a huge chunk of our budget - 30 to 40 per cent of our costs."

Ward 5 Coun. Robert Kirwan was uneasy about the direction that the discussions were taking and ultimately tabled a motion to defer any decisions on staff direction until October.

"We're asking staff to come in with no more than a 3.9 per cent property tax increase, on top of finding $13.1 million so we can keep it at 3.9 per cent. You heard (manager of financial planning and budgeting) Mr. (Steve) Facey tell us that the increase in dollars is $24 million over the 2020 budget, that $24 million translates into over eight per cent, so if we approve this resolution now, we're basically saying we need to find eight per cent, we have to find 4.5 per cent from the existing budget, shave that off in order to raise by 3.9 per cent," said Kirwan.

"I've heard a lot of people tossing out things we can do to find that $13.1 million and right now people are throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks and we haven't had that discussion. We've extended our budget process to the end of March, I don't think we're ready today to commit to a 3.9 per cent increase when we know that we're going to have to have discussions in the fall in order to find the $13.1 million."

The committee voted in favour of deferring discussions until Nov. 3, when staff will return with the same report and same seven resolutions that were on the table on Aug. 11.

"They may have recommendations in an update where they say 'resolution two should be amended to read this, and resolution five should be amended to read this, and where we're talking about service levels these are the ideas that we have and would like to delve further into', it's going to be much the same discussion with a bit more fine tuning," said Jakubo.

A day after the committee deferred the budget discussion, the city got word that they would be receiving more than $12 million in emergency relief funding  - $9.1 million for operating expenses and more than $3 million for transit.

"Really that's for our 2020 year and if you've been following some of our reports we've been saying our deficit for 2020 was going to be $6.5 million and we've already approved $5.9 million of deferred capital projects, money that could be brought back in to balance the budget so we were already almost right on a balanced year," said Jakubo.

"This funding is going to be great, we may not be able to get all the projects going that we had planned in the fall, but we'll be able to get started on them in the spring and we're able to carry over some of that funding to 2021 if we don't use it in 2020."


Comments

Verified reader

If you would like to apply to become a verified commenter, please fill out this form.