City looks to delve into budget process and invites public into the fray
By Timothy Schafer
The process has begun to crunch the numbers on the city’s next budget and financial direction, and the public is invited to toss their two cents into the endeavour.
Over the next five months financial deliberations by Grand Forks city council will trim the financial fat and herald new spending streams, culminating in the adoption of bylaws for a new financial plan and a tax rate for mid May.
Although the public is invited to become involved in the journey, a scheduling snag did cause some concern in council. Coun. Beverly Tripp raised a question about the timing of two meetings, asking for the Jan. 30 and Feb. 14 meetings to be moved to another date since the two coincided with regular and committee-of-the-whole meetings.
“I know we get awfully exhausted when we have such large agendas and
so many things to consider in a day,” she said.
But city chief administrative officer Doug Allin thought the scheduling of the meetings might prove fortuitous in bringing out more of the public to participate in the process.
“The community is already invited to these,” he said about the multiple meetings. “It’s nice to get people out for these (budget) meetings.”
The budget meetings began in October when the city held its fee-for-service presentations for the upcoming budget, and in November hosted an open house on its 20-year capital plan. In December the draft operating budgets were prepared.
But the bulk of the work begins this month with the budget process overview — a capital budget presentation — taking place at 1 p.m. on Jan. 16 as a council workshop. That meeting is followed the same day by a regular council meeting with the early budget approvals for capital projects from the presentation.
Two weeks later (Jan. 30 at 1 p.m.) another council workshop will continue with capital budget presentations, as well as operations budget presentations by city management, and 2017-2021 revenue projections.
Another workshop for council will take place Feb. 6 (11 a.m.), and again on Feb. 14 (1 p.m.) to review operating budgets and revenue requirements.
On Feb. 27 (1 p.m.) council will review and finalize its tax and utility rates, moving into a committee-of-the-whole meeting on March 13 to introduce the 2017-2021 Financial Plan Bylaw.
That piece of legislation will be followed by the first to third readings of the bylaw on March 27 in a regular council meeting, and the introduction of the Tax Rates Bylaw for 2017 in a committee-of-the-whole meeting on April 10.
That same meeting will see the adoption of the financial plan.
The bylaw for tax rates will see first to third readings on April 24 with adoption at a special meeting in early May.
The deadline to adopt the 2017-2021 Financial Plan Bylaw and Tax Rates Bylaw is May 15, 2017.
A secure future for food
The deadline has closed for the request for proposals for a regional food security plan and the regional district director for rural Grand Forks told council there should be some progress soon in that regard. Roly Russell — RDKB Area D (rural Grand Forks) — said the request closed in mid December.
“So we should have an announcement as to how that will look moving
forward,” he said. Russell said a food security plan would be as much the city’s plan as it would rural Grand Forks’.
Once the proposal is awarded, he said that process to develop it will go on for a year with the completion of the food security plan completed in two years, followed by the implementation of the plan for the next year.
In that process an advisory council will be designed from a number of
the stakeholders from agriculture and food groups in the city to help guide the formulation of a plan.