The City of Quesnel will ring in the new year with a new budget process.
Mayor Bob Simpson, says the first step will be to actually figure out what the core budget of the city should look like, what programs and services and infrastructure needs to be maintained and understanding where the fluff is in the current budget.
Simpson knows there will be some tough decisions to make…
“This year alone we will be losing between $500,000 to $600,000 in industrial tax revenue to the City.”
“One of the questions we need to ask is do we have room in the budget to absorb that loss or do have to increase taxes in order to cover that loss.”
Simpson says other tough decisions include whether or not to increase taxes to cover inflation or should they increase the contribution to the Quesnel Works Program which is a separate line item on people’s tax assessments.
He says they also need to do the budget as if the senior levels of government don’t exist because he says they are not funding municipalities to the same degree as they have in the past.
Simpson says waiting for the Federal Government to come up with money for the new arena is a good example of this.
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