The Town of Bonnyville has approved their interim operating and capital budgets following a Dec. 10 meeting.
At the Dec. 3 open house council heard a detailed breakdown of the budget.
Council worked to balance the budget and projects were deferred from the operating budget.
Items referred range from, the elimination of the BBQ Bash funding, deferral of the Seniors Transportation Grant program as other options are reviewed, deferral of the development technician position and the largest deferral of the bunch being Stepping Stones Society Capital Grant request and the Gala Sponsorship not being approved.
Items deferred save anywhere from $1,000 in the budget to up to $515,000.
Mayor Elisa Brosseau thanked the team for the hard work they’ve put in to come to a balanced budget.
“I think we did a lot of hard work over the last month, thank you to administration and council we had a lot of great discussions, I’m really happy with this budget going forward,” Mayor Elisa Brosseau
Coun. Neil Langridge spoke about the focus on improving community safety in the budget.
“I believe it was a great last few weeks working on this and some tough decisions but also some great ones to see. I know it was a big focus,couple of the projects that aren’t listed in here, but improving community safety was a big focus of this council,” he said.
Council passed a motion to accept the interim operating budget before turning their focus to the capital budget.
On the capital side, a number of projects were deferred including storm trunk upgrades, the library expansion and the elimination of the capital infrastructure rehab.
Reserve transfers for equipment replace total $736,963 and a reserve transfer of $847,304 has been included to balance the capital budget. The total amount taken from reserves is
The remaining deficit of $847,304 will be funded from the General Capital Reserve to ensure the 2025 Interim Capital Budget is a balanced budget.
Reserve transfers for equipment replacement totals $736,963 and a reserve transfer in the amount of $847,304 has been included to balance the Capital Budget. As a result, the total amount to be transferred from reserves is $1,584,267.
Coun. Phil Kushnir was happy to see the pool be included in the capital budget.
“I would just like to thank administration for what they’ve done with this, the things that have been deferred that we can do so we can try to get a pool and get some of the stuff done that we want to get done,” he said.
Final budget changes and approvals will happen in April 2025 with the tax rate bylaw set to be reviewed in May 2025.
Read more: Bonnyville faces budget deficit
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