Budget time is upon us once again. Every year the municipality has the daunting task of putting together a balanced budget.
Municipalities are legislatively required to ensure their budgets balanced, meaning if you take the revenues and subtract the expenses you land on a surplus or deficit. That isn’t the only difficulty a municipality faces during budget time.
Around Canada, cities are often the ones receiving the smallest amount of the tax cut. “We collect less than 10 cents of every dollar you pay in total taxes.” That was Lloydminster’s Mayor Gerald Aalbers speaking on this issue during budget time.
Lloydminster is left with not many choices on how they make their money, municipal taxes, user fees and sale of goods make up most of our yearly revenue. The expenses keep going up every year too, if inflation wasn’t bad enough there’s aging infrastructure, roads, unbudgeted projects, and the list goes on.
The municipality has limited ways of attaining additional funding, grants or funding from other bodies of government are possible but when you’re asking for millions it can be difficult to lobby them to come to your aid. You may be wondering how the city decides what to spend its money on. The city looks at its list of projects and items the city needs to attend to and decides based on importance and priority. This means we needed a new wastewater treatment system as federal regulations had changed. Most recently the city has been looking at aging water infrastructure, brought on partially by the disaster that took place in Calgary.
This is all to say, yes the municipality may seem like it’s mishandling finances but there’s only so much they can do with the limited resources they have. Short of a miracle cheque coming from the bigger bodies of government Lloydminster can only do so much.
It’s also important if you have concerns about the budget, and the things city hall is doing to speak to elected officials. Write a letter, get involved, attend a council meeting have your voice heard.
Ultimately during budget time, I do not envy those around the table, I’m more than happy being on this side of the table.
Read more: Opinion: Violence, chickens and networking
Locally owned and community driven, the Lloydminster Meridian Source is the online news source in the Border City. Whether it’s breaking news, features or sports, if you have questions about what’s going on around town, Source it with us.
Since online platforms no longer support the sharing of news, we encourage you to bookmark meridiansource.ca. Whether you’re having a coffee or enjoying a meal, check in any time for the most up-to-date news in Lloydminster.
