THUNDER BAY – The City of Thunder Bay is surveying the public on the proposed 2024 capital budget.
The survey is available until Nov. 12 and can be completed online or via hard copy available at Thunder Bay Public Library locations and the city hall lobby.
City treasurer Keri Greaves said the city has noticed a low number of people responding to city surveys.
“We really want to encourage community members whether you're a resident or a business. We want to hear from you. A highly engaged public helps administration and ultimately council make better decisions. We're hoping that we get a lot of responses to the survey,” said Greaves, also general manager of corporate services..
City administration is looking for feedback on the way the document is formatted and aligns with residents’ priorities.
“What we're trying to do is really improve the understandability and readability of the documents so that the community and council have a better understanding of where dollars are being spent and how they're being spent and the impact on the community of those dollars,” Greaves said.
What the city trying to do with the new format is create a capital budget that looks like a service-based model where community services such as transportation, environment, parks, recreation, neighbourhood services, and protective services have their sections, he said.
Greaves said in the previous year the readability of a budget document wasn’t so easy for the public to understand.
For example, the finances for multi-divisional projects that involved both water infrastructure and road maintenance were separate categories.
Greaves said the new format will group the multi-divisional project so that the public “could actually see the full impact of that expansion.”
“We’re really trying to group things so that the community members who aren't intimately knowledgeable about the city structure can see where their tax dollars are going,” Greaves said.
Moreover, the new format will highlight how the city is leveraging projects with provincial and federal funding to avoid misconceptions about how much a project is being funded by taxpayers and government grants.
“We're actually leveraging significant provincial and federal funding for these projects. I think that kind of got lost in the shuffle in the old presentation. All that information was in there. But, I think now it's more visible to the average reader,” said Greaves.
Greaves will also be presenting the proposed 2025 capital budget on Monday's committee of the whole as a first reading to gather feedback from council members.
The proposed 2025 capital budget has a $58.5 million increase over 2024 coming out at $161.8 million. The city budgeted $103.2 million last year.
Greaves said the majority of the increase was $32 million for the indoor turf facility which “administration is very focused on keeping the cost of (the) facility down” at the request of council.
“But it has to be in the budget at this point, we can't leave it out,” said Greaves.
Furthermore, he noted that other items that contributed to the increase were the housing accelerator fund and the enabling water fund which are leveraged funds from the federal and provincial government and not included in last year’s budget.
“These new initiatives helped us create new expanded services that it's gonna help spur growth in the community, and the local taxpayer isn't having to foot the bill,” said Greaves.
To clear up any confusion from the public, Greaves said the capital budget isn’t the only step in the budget process.
The 2025 operating budget will be presented to the public in January of next year in accordance with the budget calendar.
Once made public, the city will host public engagement sessions through surveys and face-to-face consultations.
“We're actively trying to improve the opportunities for the public to engage on the entire budget process,” Greaves said.
