Despite extensive damage throughout the MD of Bighorn from June floods, the municipality’s 2014 operating and capital budget is largely unchanged over last year.
Ratepayers in Bighorn can expect to see a slight tax increase over last year after approval of the 2014 operating and capital budgets, but not because of the flood damage.
Bighorn councillors approved a $17.5 million operating budget and a $12 million capital budget Tuesday (Feb. 11). The 2013 operating budget, in comparison, was $7.4 million, a 5.7 per cent increase.
The change in the operating budget is not because of flood damage, but instead a result of water and wastewater projects in the MD.
And while costs are up, so too are revenues. The MD is anticipating $13.43 million in revenue, again largely because of the water and wasterwater projects.
The final tax requisition for the operating budget sits at $4 million, only up $200,000 over last year.
Council authorized an $83,500 withdraw from the tax rate stabilization fund to will keep the overall increase in the operating budget to 3.5 per cent overall. That corresponds to a 4.93 per cent municipal tax increase, according to a report prepared by Shaina Carvelli, director of finance.
The Finance and Economic Development Committee met Jan. 3 and Jan. 22 and directed administration to keep the net increase at 3.5 per cent, which puts the net municipal tax requirement at 4.93 per cent over 2013.
MD of Bighorn Reeve Dene Cooper attributes the fact that it is a business-as-usual budget to the assistance the MD has received from the provincial government.
“The government has come alongside with us and have been really good; when we send bills, they send money,” Cooper said Wednesday (Feb. 12). “We might be $300,000 into our own reserves and that comes to a matter of interest, but we haven’t had any bills not paid.”
Those bridge funds, he added, do not show up as a cost to the MD.
“It’s too early to know the final costs,” he said. “There’s no estimates of the final dispositions, but we are surviving and if we hadn’t gotten special consideration we wouldn’t be.”
One invoice alone from Lafarge for $1.7 million for rock used to armour Exshaw Creek during the flooding would have created an undue hardship on the municipality, Cooper said.
“If we did that, nothing else would happen. We’d probably still have staff, but we wouldn’t have gas in trucks. It would be awful, it just wouldn’t work,” he said.
The MD of Bighorn at 2,700 square kilometres, saw damage in five of its hamlet nodes, some of it extensive and devastating, such as what was experienced in Exshaw and Benchlands.
“It’s highly unlikely that all of the requested amounts will be covered off by all of the funds sent,” Cooper said. “I’m expecting, at the end of the day, the MD of Bighorn will be well into the bracket of OK, we will not be overwhelmed.”
Even the cost sharing formula of 75-25 would have been too much for the MD, Cooper said.
“When you’ve got $12 million, we’re done before we’re out of the gate and they realized that wasn’t going to work,” he said.
“I wouldn’t want to be known to be anything but thankful to Albertans and what they have done.
“Red Cross, Rotary and those kinds of organizations, they played a role that was not occupied by anything else.”
The $83,500 tax rate stabilization fund withdraw is up from last year ($51,970), but lower than 2012 ($100,00) and 2011 ($146,000).
