CANMORE – A surplus of more than $1.7 million for the Town of Canmore is now available to address the financial stress of COVID-19 related impacts.
Council unanimously approved allocating the Town’s 2019 surplus of $1,731,182 into its tax stabilization reserve on Tuesday (April 21), which can be easily retrieved in the short-term when needed.
The surplus is usually allocated to various reserves based on council's business plan, polices and strategies, said manager of finance Chelsey Richardson, but she added the Town needs to be responsive to the current pandemic and its unprecedented effects on the community.
“Under our reserves policy, the tax stabilization reserve’s stated purpose is ‘to mitigate tax rate increases in cases of an emergent, non-recurring nature,’ so from administration’s perspective the current pandemic really matches the intent of that reserve and gives us a lot of flexibility on how we use that surplus to best address that situation,” Richardson said.
With Tuesday’s decision, Canmore’s tax stabilization reserve balance is now approximately $4 million.
Councillor Joanna McCallum reinforced it is a prudent place to put the funds.
“It assures the public that it’s in a holding spot so that we can make some thoughtful decisions moving forward and we can use those funds to do so,” she said.
Coun. Vi Sandford said it gives administration a few more tools to look at what they can do in 2020.
“The flexibility that we get from putting it in this location, it’s good timing for us to put it here and gives us that opportunity of how we can examine to benefit the 2020 tax year, if we need to,” Sandford said.
Richardson said there are three main factors contributing to the surplus, including that development overall was better than its net deficit by $591,000; policing was better than its budget net deficit by $150,000; and other items contributing to $990,000.
Richardson added revenues were $1 million better than overall projected in the budget from planning fees ($609,000); increased policing fine revenue ($102,000); increased revenue from franchise fees ($96,000), and all other revenue attributed to $310,000.
The Town did see $96,000 in decreased recreation revenue, mainly from arena rentals while the Canmore Rec Centre was under renovations.
For expenses, the municipality was under budget by $725,000, which included spending less on salaries, wages and benefits and savings in contracted services, among others.
