St. Albert Coun. Cam MacKay turned heads at Monday’s council meeting by reeling off an unprecedented list of budget cuts.
Grins and snickers wafted through council as MacKay read off a list of 27 budget motions that he intends to make this week when council tries to whittle its budget down from a proposed 3.6 per cent property tax increase.
MacKay identified 27 areas where he thinks the city can save a total of $1.1 million. His list ranged from $5,000 savings in specific departments to trimming $250,000 from overall salaries, wages and benefits. The cuts represent roughly 1.5 percentage points and, if they’re all approved, would bring down the 2011 property tax increase to about 2.1 per cent.
MacKay said he came up with the list by analyzing previous budgets and reviewing each department’s plans for 2011.
“Everything that’s down there, there’s a reason that I’ve picked it out,” he said. “I’ve got my explanations that I’ll give out when we come back to chambers.”
Council resumed budget deliberations Tuesday and is expected to delve deeply into motions on Thursday.
MacKay said he requested the budget in digital form and has spent the last month working on spreadsheets to identify trends. He purposely waited to make his motions until he’d heard presentations from all the city departments, which caused him to trim back his original list of 35 spending changes.
“I just wanted to make sure that the stuff I thought should be on the table was on the table,” he said.
Regarding his idea to trim $250,000 from salaries, he explained there’s usually money left over each year from salaries not paid because turnover creates fluctuation in city staffing levels.
“This is just a small percentage of the total budget that I figured would account for that,” MacKay said, noting he’s not advocating for staff layoffs.
Mayor Nolan Crouse, who has always prided himself on being one of the most probing members of council, praised MacKay for doing his homework.
“I’m happy that people are penetrating the issues,” Crouse said.
Coun. Roger Lemieux said MacKay rocked the boat but he didn’t mind.
“I have to respect the fact that he’s done his research,” Lemieux said. “Whether or not these cuts are actually feasible, we’re going to have to wait to hear back from administration. I suspect a lot of them are.”
City manager Bill Holtby said he’s never seen that many budget motions at once. MacKay’s motions kept city staff busy Tuesday preparing information reports, which should be ready for Thursday’s budget meeting, he said.
“We’re hunkering down right now,” Holtby said. “It’s one of those ‘drop everything,’ this is highest priority.”
Holtby thinks a budget decision is still possible by the scheduled date of Dec. 20.
MacKay said he’s looking forward to hearing back from administration and having council decide what funding requests make sense.
“I was pretty impressed with this budget initially from administration, but I’d like to just pressure them a little bit to do the absolute best budgeting that they can,” MacKay said.
Council will also have to debate a motion by Coun. Len Bracko to limit the property tax increase to 1.5 per cent.
