If you think it’s a lost cause to try to influence city councillors with your suggestions on how and where municipal tax dollars should be spent, you’re misinformed.
Coun. Cori Ramsay, chair of the city finance and audit committee, says public input is a critical component of the budgeting process in the months leading up those two council meetings in late January, when council will pass the city’s operating budget for 2025-26.
“The budget consultation is one of the greatest opportunities for residents to engage with us and provide feedback on budget,” said Ramsay.
“The online survey we do, the social media posts, all of that is taken into account when each of the individual councilors are looking at the budget in the new year. There’s so much opportunity to gain insights for about how the public feels about how the city’s spending, and I personally put a great amount of weight on it.”
Once the cost of running civic facilities has been paid and the workforce that supplies goods and services that keep the city operating has been compensated with paycheques, there’s not much money from the property tax pot. But Ramsay says some spending is left to the discretion of city staff and it’s ultimately up to council to decide whether or not to spend it.
And now is the time to make suggestions.
On Wednesday, the city hosted a public engagement session at the Civic Centre to discuss budget issues and lined up senior administrative staff to field questions from the public and results from that will be posted on the city’s website.
An online budget survey on the city’s Get Involved web page will be collecting opinions and ideas until Friday to give people a chance to let our elected councilors what they think should be spending priorities.
A capital plan budget will be presented to the finance and audit committee Dec. 4, and once councillors see how much of the city budget is tied to fixed costs then they will know how much wiggle room there is to pay for other programs or enhancements to the city.
“A lot of the projects are going through the RFP (request for proposal) process, so it does help staff get the nod from the committee so they can get that RFP process started a little earlier in the year as we have a short construction season,” said Ramsay.
“But I wouldn’t say it’s set in stone. There’s still the ability of council to make adjustments at budget, as we did see in the last budget cycle.”
In April, city council recommended to the finance and audit committee that it go ahead with spending $36 million on repairs to the Prince George Aquatic Centre. The four-phase project will address building system failures, end-of-service-life infrastructure, energy efficiency and meet health and safety code requirements.
The city already has $14.88 million in reserve funding earmarked for the pool and will have to borrow $22 million, which passed the alternate approval process. That loan will result in an annual debt servicing cost of $1.85 million over 20 years, which is expected raise the annual tax levy by 1.34 per cent.
Ramsay says that’s an expensive example of the city having to come to terms with replacing its worn-out or failing infrastructure just to maintain the standards residents have come to expect.
“I think we were very surprised by that,” Ramsay said. “We have a lot of aging infrastructure in need of renewal. A lot of it was built around the same time and it’s going to continuously come up.
“One of the things we implemented last year was after the tax levy is set, one per cent is added to the infrastructure reinvestment levy to help us stock up that war chest. That savings will help us build that money up so that we have it to invest in more infrastructure projects going forward.”
Based on last year’s levy, the fund has $1.388 million set aside from the current fiscal year.
The finance and audit committee also includes councillors Tim Bennett, Ron Polillo and Trudi Klassen. By design, no more than four councillors are allowed on a standing committee so that any decisions made at that table would still require approval from a quorum of city council (at least five council members).
Ramsay said the city plans to create a committee of the whole for capital projects this summer, which would allow all city councillors to participate in informal discussions of capital project funding months before decisions are made by senior staff.
“So we’ll be able to, in June, per say, look at all of the capital projects and perhaps give an indicator to administration on where we would see the priorities being,” said Ramsay. “Committee of the whole allows us to meet, and any decisions made there would be referred back to council.”
More information about the city’s budget process is available on the City of Prince George website.
