Update: The Special Committee of the Whole meeting for Tuesday, March 12 has been cancelled by the City of Castlegar.
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Castlegar City Council spent five hours deliberating capital expenses Thursday night. The goal was to reduce this year’s tax increase which was originally estimated at over seven per cent for residential payers. Councillor Maria McFaddin was happy with the outcome.
“I think we did our purpose which is to bring our tax rate down, which we needed to do and was always our intention, but still keep the integrity of what we want our budget to encompass.”
Some of the items that were cut include new bleachers and a concrete bleacher pad at Millennium Park and the Complex, which totaled $13,000 over two years. The bleachers are said to be in rough shape and the concrete pads would eliminate having to move them in order to mow the grass underneath, which is causing a lot of the damage. A Pavement Management Plan and Connecting Neighbourhoods Plan were also postponed by a few years. The cost savings there was $120,000 in 2019 and $50,000 in 2020. The funds would have developed a plan for road improvements and sidewalk enhancements; however, aren’t urgently needed, according to council, as there’s other planning initiatives and projects that will be underway. That includes the Official Community Plan Update in 2020 and Columbia Avenue Phase II and III.
One of the biggest cost savings was removing contributions to the sewer and water reserves to repay the work that serviced the airport lands. CAO Chris Barlow explains the repayments might not be necessary.
“The City had set up an internal repayment schedule to pay those in 2019 through 2021 and what council deliberated on tonight was to defer or eliminate those repayments to those reserves, given that the project is completed and they were completed from the appropriate reserves.”
The payments would total $690,000 over a number of years and Barlow feels there are other options available to put money back into those reserves over time.
Other spending was spread out over multiple years to help reduce the impact to tax payers. For example, $12,000 was allocated for Christmas decorations in 2019 and 2020. It was spread out to $6,000 annually over four years instead.
Mayor Bruno Tassone also felt good about the cuts they were able to make. When asked what the impacts might be for people, he identified one group that may experience a difference.
“I mean the public works guy are going to be the ones that are going to be very upset with me because it’s alwasy nice to work with new equipment, but we have to make tough decisions.”
Council delayed the purchase of a new loader and also want to know how often a rubber tire excavator was actually used before approving a new one. They will also look into leasing options and other alternatives.
The new taxation levels after the cuts will be presented to council on Tuesday night at a Special Committee of the Whole meeting starting at 5:30PM in council chambers. They’ll look at the capital plan, which includes the Infrastructure Investment Levy, over a five year and seven year period.
