HIGHLIGHTS: Council moves to have a budget with a two per cent tax increase. They also returned non-domestic animal control ($15,000 to catch skunks and racoons) to the budget and added $20,000 to the budget to allow them to make progress on updating bylaws and adding new ones. Transit service narrowly avoids getting cut, again. The police boat will stay in the budget.

All these decisions could be overturned at the final council meeting where they adopt the budget.

This post will be a live blog about council’s public meeting on the 2011 budget. A live blog is an immediate report of council’s deliberations. I’ll be writing and updating this post as they talk, as a result, there may (will) be some typos in the content.

In attendance tonight are councillors Deb Kozak, Marg Stacey, Robin Cherbo, Donna Macdonald, Kim Charlesworth and Bob Adams. Mayor John Dooley is not here yet.

From staff are Kevin Cormack, city manager, and Kelly Swetlikoe, from the finance department.

From the public there’s Glenn Hicks, from Mountain FM and that’s it.

There was an agenda for this meeting but the only item on it was the budget.

9:05 a.m.

Cormack just handed out photocopies of written feedback from the public house held last night.

Still no Dooley. Charlesworth jokes that if they do the meeting without him the meeting will go much faster. Laughter all around the table.

Cormack decides to tell council about the handouts they were given this morning. There’s an excerpt from his presentation at Tuesday’s meeting and he’s walking them through that.

The city was able to find $290,000 in new revenue. This comes from things like an increased dividend from Nelson Hydro, revenue from renting out space in 310 Ward St. (city hall).

After the increased costs and increased revenue all shake out, the city is left with a surplus of $83,750. That’s with a zero per cent tax increase.

A one per cent tax increase would get them a $148,750 surplus. A two per cent tax increase would give them a $213,750 surplus.

This surplus is to deal with unexpected events or to put into the city’s water licence*/building reserve. If council doesn’t go to a two per cent tax increase the city’s water licence/building reserve would go into the red immediately. Eighty-six thousand dollars in the hole for 2011, $174,000 in the hole in 2012 and it gets worse.

(* The water licence reserve has nothing to do with the drinking water system but the dams and compensation for flooding)

This drop is happening because of the city’s work on their greenhouse gas emissions plan and work to maintain city buildings. This year it will be $500,000 on that project.

Council can avoid all that with a two per cent increase.

9:26 a.m.

Dooley just joined the meeting, apologizing for being late. The meeting wasn’t on his calendar and he was babysitting one of his grandkids, he explains.

Charlesworth says if council wanted to stick with the figures before them over the five-year plan (which is implied in the 2011 budget), if they wanted to do major upgrades to any building, they’d have to fund those upgrades entirely by borrowing.

Adams says if the city is spending so much on greenhouse gas emissions reductions, when do they start to see savings? Cormack says they’re expect to get that money back in savings in seven years.

Charlesworth says the way gas prices are going up, some of the savings would come faster.

Adams says he’s opposed to the two per cent tax increase. He would prefer council to cut services to balance their budget rather than increase taxes.

“We can’t keep going up, can we?” Adams asks council.

Dooley agrees with Adams. He says the city has to look for efficiencies everywhere. Dooley says perhaps the city could push back some of the greenhouse gas projects to spread out the costs.

Kozak says she would like to see the numbers that are going to come out of a building review that should give them better estimates of what the costs will be to maintain them.

Cormack says the numbers (there are estimates now) are not going to get any lower.

“It’s not going to paint us a better picture. It’s going to give us clarity,” says Cormack.

Some of the improvements the city has done around greenhouse gas emissions had to be done regardless, says Charlesworth. The boilers at the Nelson and District Community Complex were at the end of their life, she says. The city would have had to replace them but because the new boilers are also more efficient the city can make claims to improving their greenhouse gas emissions.

It suddenly comes out that they haven’t officially started the meeting. They were waiting for the mayor. They call the meeting to order.

9:37 a.m.

This is a special meeting (as opposed to a committee of the whole) so the decisions they make will stick.

The agenda is bare: 2a) 2011-2015 Financial Plan.

Cormack says what staff will present council is what they showed the public, a two per cent tax increase.

Charlesworth says if they wanted to allocate some of the money from the surplus to a line item, would we do that now?

What they’ll talk about

Macdonald asks council to make the items they’d like to discuss today. This list will be discussed below.

Charlesworth would like to have a discussion around $20,000 to ensure that the work around the bylaw adjudication system and updating bylaws gets done. We’ve been waiting for three years, says Charlesworth.

Stacey would like to reinstate skunk control ($15,000) and to discuss reducing transit service during non-peak hours to save money.

Adams would like to look at reductions in the budget. He considers transit too high. He’s also said staff should look at a two per cent reduction across the budget.

Charlesworth says staff have done that with their zero per cent tax increase.

Dooley says they should also look at council travel and the additional person at the youth centre. He says volunteers can help cover that hole they’ve asked for.

Cherbo says he wants to consider at least a 1.75 tax increase to match cost of living.

Kozak says everything was brought up that she’d like to discuss. She’s also like a broad overview of the changes to the various departments (like reducing snowplowing).

On snowplowing, Dooley said he’d like to see a $70,000 in public works, he doesn’t care where it comes from.

Stacey notes the police boat is still in the budget. She’d like to talk about it.

They did remove the sani-dump, reduced fire planning costs, costs around 310 Ward St. Swetlikoe says she didn’t get any direction on the boat or a piece of equipment called “VISTA.” I recall seeing that but don’t remember what it is.

Dooley says they can’t focus on specific pieces of equipment. Council needs to look at how much they want to give various departments, not what pieces of equipment they want to buy.

Kozak disagrees and says those pieces of equipment come out of the city’s capital budget. Charlesworth says some of these items are capital costs, but they also come with ongoing operating costs and council needs to understand the implications on taxation.

Cormack says he agrees with the mayor. They should look at their policy of equipment replacement in total. If council feels they’re replacing equipment too quickly, they can talk about how they address the city’s fleet of vehicles and other equipment.

9:53 a.m.

On Vista, Dooley says he recalls there would be a conversation with the police chief. (I just looked through an earlier story and see Vista is a piece of equipment that will make it easier for the police to assess vehicle accident scenes. It’s $21,500.)

A review of what’s changed in the budget

Cormack goes back to an earlier handout (from several meetings back) looking at what they’ve included and what they’ve taken out.

Many of these items are cheaper, says Swetlikoe. For example, the new position for the IT department is no longer as high because the city found ways to fund it from other areas of the city budget that won’t impact taxation.

The city will also create an IT plan that will be funded through the Campus Reserve Fund, so there’s no impact on taxation.

The city has many reserve funds, some with requirements on how the money is used, others without such requirements.

The IT plan is needed, says Cormack, because of the growing dependance on software and the growing need to run fibre optic line to improve communication between various city buildings.

Kozak asks about the person being hired. At the moment, our IT staff are swamped. We’re hiring another person to address those needs. Where is the IT plan being done? In house? No, says Cormack.

The greenhouse gas coordinator will be funded through the community works department. The youth centre with a new part-time position, is on the list council made (see above).

10:03 a.m.

$20,000 for bylaw adjudication implementation

Charlesworth says bylaw adjudication is something she’s wanted for three years. There are new bylaws that council wants to bring in which are policy decisions that are council’s role to be making.

“We’ve had to put those all off because we’re waiting for the bylaw adjudication piece,” says Charlesworth.

She wants to make sure this new bylaw adjudication process is implemented – which would cost $20,000 – which would then allow councillors to pass new bylaws that would set the city’s policy.

Cormack agrees there are several bylaws waiting to get done. Policies dealing with city operations get priority but ones like smoking or keeping hens keep getting pushed down the line.

Dooley says he agrees with Charlesworth but he doesn’t think more money is needed. The mayor says council has thrown all this work onto city staff which overloads them.

We need to look at what should come off the table before we start adding more money, says Dooley.

We need to look at what are our clear priorities, Dooley says. We have a responsibility to pull somethings off the table so staff can get to work.

Kozak says she hears Charlesworth’s request. She recalls in a previous budget they had allocated money to let them deal with adjudication but it hasn’t happened. What has changed now that would allow them to get it done?

Is it realistic? she asks.

Cormack says city staff have changed the way they do business. They’ve adjusted some staff time to allow them to focus on areas like bylaws.

10:14 a.m.

Kozak asks if staff can do everything council has asked. Cormack says his staff can make progress on bylaw adjudication.

Cherbo says something always comes up that pushes some work back. “We seem to be spinning our wheels.”

Dooley says he would have no problem supporting it if it was a council priority. Every council says they want to make bylaw updating a priority but something else comes up. Soccer fields, pools etc.

“The bylaws are the foundation of how we run our municipality,” says Dooley.

Council needs to keep that in mind when other issues come up and city staff need to remind council that new issues will take away from these projects.

Charlesworth makes a motion they allocate $20,000 to admin for bylaw update and implementation. Adams asked where that money would come from.

Charlesworth says it would come from the planned surplus, dropping their surplus to $63,750. This is still working under the assumption of a zero per cent tax increase.

The vote: Dooley and Adams are opposed. Dooley says he’s voting opposed because he’d like to see the entire impact on the budget first. Charlesworth’s motion passes with Kozak, Charlesworth, Stacey, Cherbo and Macdonald in favour.

Cormack goes to a whiteboard in the council chambers and starts with the surplus ($83,750) and then wrote down the motion that just passed which took away $20,000 from the surplus.

Non-domestic animal control: $15,000

Stacey wants to reinstate the $15,000 for skunk control. She’s had plenty of feedback from people who want the city to trap skunks and racoons.

Cormack says one of his staff are contacting the company who did the trapping before to see if they’re interested in working for residents on an ad hoc basis.

“I believe every year we take it off we regret it,” says Stacey.

The animal population increases and they end up putting it back on the budget a year or two later, she says, and downtown gets stinky.

Charlesworth disagrees with Stacey. Home owners can look after their own problems, she says. Cherbo says he agrees with Charlesworth (which is rarely, he adds).

Dooley says if they’re going to add this item, they need to have a timeline in place for when they want the trapping to start. The time is now, when the animals are giving birth. Cormack says they tried that last year but caught no animals because they weren’t active at the time.

Council disagrees and say some residents are catching skunks right now. Stacey says she has a neighbour who’s catching them right now and he wants the city to do it.

Cormack says if council wants to approve it and want it to be effective, they want it to be a multi-year project so the trappers can start earlier.

They caught 70 or 80 skunks last summer. That’s $200 a skunk, says Dooley.

Kozak says she’s torn over this issue. We had a huge issue with skunks a few years ago, which is why they brought it back. Whether it’s been effective or not, council hasn’t been diligent in researching.

I’m not so sure that we’re prepared to have it in place this year, she says. They need some analysis and look at who the possible contractors are, tighten up the terms of the contract to set out when it would start and be prepared for the next season.

Macdonald says she doesn’t think there’s a way to charge a homeowner as Stacey proposed. The nature of the animals is they move around. If a skunk is trapped in my yard but it’s been moving through the neighbourhood, it’s not fair to charge me.

The $15,000 isn’t making a lot of progress, says Macdonald. Stacey disagrees. It’s helping the city manage the population. If they catch 10 now that’s 70 more that won’t be born later.

“If we abandon it this year it’s going to be mayhem next year.”

Cherbo notes some residents are feeding their domestic animals outside. They have open compost piles. If the racoons and skunks are here, it’s because they’re getting food. The city needs a better bylaw to control food availability in the city, he suggests.

Adams says he thinks they need the animal trapping. He also says they need an ongoing, five-year plan to deal with non-domestic animals.

With a straw vote: Stacey, Cherbo, Dooley and Adams support adding the $15,000 for non-domestic animal control.

(Council shifted to straw votes because all these decisions will come up at the final budget adoption. Sounds like they may try to hash out these decisions one more time at another council meeting.)

Adams says he doesn’t want to put this out for tender and wants to hire Trappers Inc, the company that did it before, to start as soon as possible.

Reducing transit services

Cormack asks if staff want to create a report to show what the savings are for various reductions.

B.C. Transit is working to help the city. A planning person from B.C. Transit could come up in April to help them look at their schedules.

Those changes to the schedule would be adapted later in the year.

Stacey says she’d like to see them save enough money to cover the costs they’ve added today.

Dooley says they should “stop the bleeding right now.”

He wants to cut Sunday service, reduce evening service and send one of the new buses back. He wants to send a message to B.C. Transit.

“I’ve been reviewing this service for a month and it’s completely inefficient,” says Dooley. “B.C. Transit will not work in a hurry, he says. They say they will but they won’t.”

The city is facing a $128,000 deficit in transit.

“They’re as slow as the second coming of Christ,” says Dooley. They’re in a quagmire in Vancouver and they won’t have time for us. There’s work on a regional plan and it’s not going to be cheap.

He wants transit to stop past 6:30 p.m. and not on the weekend and send back one of the buses.

Adams says they can’t wait for B.C. Transit. We do have some reports that show Sunday has very little use. He would cut Sunday service as soon as possible.

He’d also like less service in the summers because it’s the high school students who are the big users of transit.

Transit costs went up 47 per cent. “That’s ridiculous.”

Cormack says the city can’t just decide to send one of the buses back.

Cherbo says it sounds good to reduce costs but his concern is the public and the seniors who use them. There may only be six riders in the evening but it’s their only option.

I believe our role is to provide public service, says Cherbo. If we’re going to do this we need to inform the public and take some time before cutting costs.

Charlesworth says everyone understands this is a complex issue. “It isn’t just about finances. This is a public service. The same as public housing. The same as a public library.”

We have a public service and a clear mission to reduce single-occupancy vehicles on our roads, says Charlesworth.

We can’t go cutting service out to the North Shore without consulting with the RDCK there. They have service out to the Waldorf school.

We have a lot of options other than just what B.C. Transit offers. We can look to the school board and negotiate some kind of service with them to fill our buses with school kids. We can look at some kind of taxi refund scheme to compensate people who takes buses.

“But that will take some time and consultation to come up with a creative transit system in our area.”

Council see it as a simple, economic issue but it’s a complex social issue, says Charlesworth.

Macdonald recalls the lockout several years ago. When services stopped people were most upset about the loss of Gryo Pool and transit. She’s not ready to start cutting transit without going through some kind of planning process.

Kozak agrees it’s a complex issue. She says she doesn’t understand why they couldn’t make adjustments when the first got the buses.

She wants to look at how they could get rid of the buses but also wants to keep service.

She says she was surprised to hear some RDCK directors felt they didn’t have input on the transit system connections.

“That’s not true,” says Dooley. “They were at the table.”

Kozak says there are 5,000 cars coming over the bridge. We need to have a better system so some of those people will switch to taking the bus.

Kozak says she came to today’s meeting ready to cut service. But she was encouraged by Cormack’s report that a B.C. Transit planner is coming in April.

“It is a crisis,” Kozak says. “We are bleeding, as the mayor says.”

Dooley says he agrees transit is a public service. But it’s an inefficient public service. I’m not suggesting we should not have buses, says the mayor.

“Who took the bus this morning?” he asks, looking around the table. Nobody raises their hand. “I didn’t because it’s not convenient.”

10:57 a.m.

I believe we need to send an extremely strong message to B.C. Transit, says Dooley. B.C. Transit loves studies because they take forever.

We have had a system that didn’t work on Sundays or the summertime, says the mayor. He’d like to add evening service to that older system.

Stacey says they should cut the fare box passenger assessment program (planned with B.C. Transit) and not touch anything that runs out to the North Shore because they haven’t spoken with their RDCK partners out there.

Evening service straw vote: Dooley, Adams, Stacey in favour. Defeated

Sunday service straw vote: Dooley, Adams, Stacey in favour. Defeated.

Summer service straw vote: Dooley, Adams, Stacey in favour. Charlesworth says she’s in favour of talking about that.

Kozak says they can’t make decisions right now. If there’s someone from B.C. Transit coming in April, she would like to hold off and say to B.C. Transit: If we don’t hear anything by the end of May, we’re cutting these services.

So the financial plan isn’t changing. The transit services aren’t being cut. For now.

New motion: They request a report from city staff and B.C. Transit by the end of May.

Dooley says she agrees with this idea. This is a huge opportunity to achieve greenhouse gas emission reductions and get people off the roads.

The transit system is hugely inefficient as it stands.

Charlesworth says she agrees with everything Dooley just said except the solution can’t be found in two months (were they to set a end-of-May deadline).

Responding to Charlesworth, Kozak says incremental changes can be made in two months. She’s worried about making cuts they may have to go back and reinstate.

Adams asks Cormack to add Waldorf to the list of services they’re talking about (summer, Sunday and evening service). Waldorf does pay for driver time to get bus service to their school.

Waldorf is a private school, not part of the public system.

Cormack says as the operator, they can make that decision to cut service.

The new motion passes unanimously.

Dooley encourages councillors to take the bus at different times of the day to see what it’s like.

11:12 a.m.

Overall reduction in the budget

Adams says to keep the budget at zero they could ask the city departments to find more savings and let them make their own decisions.

Cherbo says he’s heard the cost of living actually is a over two per cent. He also says that right now, an election year, it would look great to have a zero per cent tax increase but next year they could have to increase taxes by four per cent.

Kozak says they sent staff back to the drawing board already. She doesn’t feel they should do it again.

Straw vote: Only Adams is in favour.

Council travel

Travel to Federation of Canadian Municipalities prompted this discussion. Several councillors have decided to not go to the upcoming convention.

Kozak says she hadn’t realized costs were as prohibitive as they were. She had thought she could make an economical trip but when she spoke with staff, she realized it was too expensive.

Charlesworth asked Cormack to keep council appraised of how much they’ve spent from the travel pot.

Cormack says it is an election year and the city may have to pay for new councillors to travel to training sessions in December. I would just caution that you don’t spend too much of the travel budget.

They haven’t mentioned a number yet and have asked staff to let them know just how much they’ve spent so far.

New youth centre part-time position

Dooley says he thinks this could be done by volunteers. This position would $20,000.

Stacey disagrees with Dooley. It’s a risk issue, she said, especially as they’re looking at people working alone at the youth centre. Cherbo agrees with Stacey. You never know what kind of volunteer you’re getting.

Cherbo also says he thought the youth centre got the campground contract to cover this increased cost. It would, says Swetlikoe.

Dooley says he misunderstood this line item and withdraws his motion. The extra staff position remains.

The police boat

Stacey says vehicle expenses are a flash point in the community, much like the motorcycle a few years earlier. This boat would cost $17,000

The boat has been fully amortized through the city’s budget and the way they bill various departments, says Macdonald. But still taxes have to pay for the boat, says Stacey.

Kozak says she’s heard from the public about the boat. Each year we go to the public on the budget there are flash points. City staff state the need for their requests but with something like this, which is viewed by the public as a “want to have” as opposed to a “need to have,” there needs to be public discussion.

Nelson doesn’t have huge docks or water traffic, says Kozak. When she thinks about where she’d like police officers, it would be on land rather than on the water.

Cherbo disagrees with Kozak. “Have you ever been out on the lake in a kayak?” he asks Kozak.

The West Arm of Kootenay Lake is busy and he says the boat is nitpicky in a $40 million budget. It’s a necessity, Cherbo suggests.

The boat would be paid for out of one of the reserve budgets, not taxation.

The only reason it becomes an issue is because the media reports on it and makes it an issue, suggests Cherbo.

Dooley says the issue is not the boat. The issue is the police have explained what they feel is important to provide service. It’s the same as what the head of public works does.

“At some point you have to decide ‘Is this guy telling you the truth or not?’”

The impact on the budget is the money for the boat would come out of the equipment pool budget. The boat is amortized over 15 years so the yearly costs for the boat are actually small, says Swetlikoe.

In favour of removing the boat from the budget: Stacey and Kozak. The boat stays.

The Vista piece of equipment

This is a computerized piece of equipment that creates 3D measurements of crime and accident scenes. It’s basically high-tech survey equipment. The police chief said they’re working with “stone-age” equipment at the moment. It would cost $21,500 and software would take it up to $30,000.

The police and public works department are looking at whether they could share the equipment so it could be used more often. The police would use it two or three times a year.

Charlesworth says there’s no reason to take it out of the budget right now because it’s been clearly stated as a need from the police department.

Stacey says that, according to the police, it’s a “nice-to-have” request used for car accidents and blood spatter investigations. It would be rarely used in the city, says Stacey.

11:43 a.m.

This equipment is also coming out of the water licence reserve budget, so council can wait to hear if this Vista equipment could be useful for the public works department.

Straw vote to remove it: The vote is approved. The Vista equipment won’t be purchased until

Other items

Kozak says she’d like to look at funding community groups and wants a conversation on how those things are funded, such as the Capitol Theatre. They had discussed a five per cent cut to all the groups (they didn’t actually approve that measure).

11:51 a.m.

Two per cent tax increase approved, for now

Charlesworth moves motion that city staff present a budget with a two per cent tax increase which includes $15,000 for non-domestic animal control and $20,000 increased funding to city administration to update city bylaws.

Adams and Dooley were opposed to the motion.

This budget will come up at a future council meeting and it’s likely they’ll hash out these issues once more.

The meeting is adjourned.

Lunch time.

12 p.m.