The delay of opening Elevation Place last year has contributed to a significant $1.9 million surplus for the Town of Canmore.
The operating surplus, according to senior finance officer Ric Irwin, came about for a number of reasons, including the delay of opening the $39 million recreation facility, unexpected levels of revenue, position vacancies and extended staff absences.
“During 2013, through quarterly financial reporting, we kept council aware of the expected surplus,” he said. “Administration is recommending the $1.9 million operating surplus go into three reserves based on internal policy and the capital plan.”
Council unanimously approved the suggested reserve contributions with $474,218 going in the Perpetually Affordable Housing reserve, $391,232 into general operating reserve and $1.1 million to the general capital reserve.
Irwin said from 2005-08 money was put into the PAH reserve as a result of revenues in the planning and development department. This year saw increased revenue of $596,000 above what was budgeted and that is why funds were recommended to go into that account. He said there has also been discussion about targets for the operating reserve of $6 million or 20 per cent of expenditures. That 20 per cent rationale is why administration recommended putting funds into that account, which currently has a balance of $3.5 million.
As for the contribution to general capital reserves, Irwin said the costs of long-term flood mitigations are at this point unknown, but council can expect there to be a cost for those projects in the future.
“It is clear that funding will be needed over the next couple years and we believe it is prudent to gather these dollars when they are available,” he said.
Doug Mundell with Yong Parkyn McNall LLP provided council with an independent auditor’s report for Canmore’s financials in 2013. As per the non-consolidated financials, he detailed Canmore has $52.3 million in assets, $49.9 million in liabilities and is up in net financial assets by $2.3 million as of the end of last year. There was also $5.8 million in new borrowing and $4.9 million paid off in debt.
Acknowledging the audited financials are complicated and hard to understand, he summarized where the municipality stands as of the end of 2013.
“At the end of the year, ratepayers of the town of Canmore are overall $10 million ahead of where they stood last year, which is great given the kind of year you had and the adversities faced,” he said. “This is a clean audit report in our opinion.”
It is the third year YPM has audited Canmore’s financials and Mundell said the systems in place are working well. He said his auditors look very closely at the budget passed by council and make administration defend everything that doesn’t match. “The systems this town has in place are all working, we test them every year and that’s fabulous,” he said. “You don’t have fluff in your budget. I don’t like budgets with fluff as that means administration is getting away with things.”
Council approved the audited financials unanimously and Mayor John Borrowman noted council works hard to pass a defensible budget each year.
“Council takes pride in working with administration – we do a lot of work to create a defensible budget and at the end of the year we have good audited financial statements,” he said.
