Williams Lake City Council to Begin 2020 Budget Discussions Early

Williams Lake City Council will be delving into 2020 Budget discussions as early as the next 30 days.

Mayor Walt Cobb said a number of items have come to light that wasn’t part of their immediate budget and that staff has been asking for early approval.

“Now there are all these items that seem to be urgent and we can’t continue to do budgeting that way,” he said.

“We have to have a little bit more detail and we have to have a little bit more early discussions before we can start to figure out where we’re going because at the end of the day if we continue down this road we’ll have no room to move in 2020.”

In addition to the early budget discussions, Cobb said they will be looking at putting in place a capital replacement bylaw.

He said a policy was in place many years ago when he and Councillor Scott Nelson were on previous Councils in which x number of dollars would be set aside every time a piece of equipment was charged-out so that once it came to its life cycle there would be enough money put aside towards its replacement.

“That has gone by the wayside,” Cobb said.

“Because it’s only a policy, Council can change it whereas it’s a bylaw they can’t do that. It has to go through a public process in order to change a bylaw and that’s what I’m asking for at this time because we can’t continue to go down this road. We have to have some little better planning when it comes to replacing our equipment so that every piece of equipment we have to replace doesn’t become a political debate; it’s a business decision, not a political decision.”

After giving early budget approval for the tendering of a ladder truck to replace the current unit at a cost of $1.2 million last week, Council will be considering at its next regular meeting giving approval for the replacement of the Public Works street sweeper in 2019 as an additional budget item in the current year with the remainder approval ($190,800) in the 2020 budget.