Through the second round of budget talks, the city’s proposed 2.67 per cent tax increase has stayed the same.
City council spent the better part of five hours flipping its way through most of the proposed 2012 budget Wednesday adding only two items and taking nothing away.
A $235,000 one-time funding request was approved for the Thunder Bay Community Auditorium’s air conditioning system in order to comply with environmental regulations. That money is coming out of the rate stabilization reserve fund.
The other approval was for $10,000 in council’s travel budget. Administration had proposed that the budget be reduced to $1,250 for every councilor instead of the $2,500 usually accepted.
But councillors argued that though councillors usually don’t spend the money, which was the rationale for reducing the budget, the money not spent goes back into city coffers anyway. Coun. Linda Rydholm said travelling out of town for conferences is expensive.
“You can barely go for $2,500” she said. “Conferences cost a lot of money.”
Coun. Mark Bentz agreed.
“I don’t want to nickel and dime our ability to lobby,” he said.
Councillors proposed several other amendments to the budget but none were successful.
At-large Coun. Larry Hebert wanted to reduce the proposed tax increase to around 1.17 per cent by taking more than $2 million for an infrastructure renewal program out of the city’s $27 million Renew Thunder Bay reserves instead of putting it on the taxpayer.
But city manager Tim Commisso cautioned that fund is for leveraging money from senior levels of government for major projects like an events centre.
Current River Coun. Andrew Foulds wanted the city to extend operating hours of local libraries at the cost of $99,600. That money would pay for 26 extra operating hours weekly. Foulds said as a community hub, libraries are important. And the extra hours would help the city’s youth. Council also heard that usage at libraries is up.
“We are doing very well and I think we need to continue on this sort of upward swing,” he said. “This in a small way would be returning some of the things we’ve cut.”
But other councillors worried that the amendment would bring more and more budget requests to council.
“I’m afraid of what this door might open,” Red River Coun. Brian McKinnon said.
Coun. Aldo Ruberto said he would rather see the money be spent on a youth centre instead of more operating hours for libraries.
“Not all kids go to the library I’m sorry,” Ruberto said.
Ruberto later brought an amendment forward to add $75,000 to the parks department’s $125,000 budget for general maintenance. The motion was narrowly defeated 7-6.
The at-large councillor said that figure seemed low considering it is supposed to help fix the city’s baseball, soccer, tennis and basketball facilities. That figure compared to what it costs to maintain one hockey rink is unfair he added.
“I’ve been to the tennis courts they’re brutal,” he said. “That number has to be changed and it can’t wait.”
While some councillors agreed the city’s facilities are in rough shape, Bentz said it would be haphazard budgeting to just throw money at a problem without hearing from administration what it would need to fix things and what the priorities are.
“Rather than just pick a number out of the air,” he said.
Council will continue budget deliberations Feb. 21.
