Council has rejected the idea of tweaking projected 2016 revenues by increasing the expected take from traffic fines.
With extra fine revenue helping to fuel a large chunk of the 2015 surplus, Coun. Sheena Hughes suggested increasing the 2016 budget numbers to include an extra $1 million.
The $5.2 million 2015 surplus benefited from increased provincial fine amounts and about $2.7 million more in photo radar tickets than had been expected. The city collected $6.4 million in total fines and penalties in 2015.
With that in mind, Hughes wanted to increase the staff-suggested and council-approved estimate in the 2016 budget and reduce the amount of property taxes needed by $1 million. The 2016 operating budget estimates $5.2 million in fines and penalties will be received.
“Our ticket revenue is skyrocketing,” she said.
Staff cautioned that the budget number is based on a five-year average with some other factors considered, and is kept conservative in case of fluctuations.
Aaron Giesbrecht, the city’s manager of policing services, said just because more tickets have been issued also doesn’t mean the tickets get paid.
Coun. Tim Osborne said he thinks it is more appropriate to use traffic fine revenue for traffic safety projects, and was also hesitant to change the revenue projections until there is a longer trend in place.
“It feels like there’s still some settling taking place here,” he said.
He and some other councillors also felt increasing the revenue projections would help feed criticism that photo radar is meant to be a revenue-generating “cash cow” rather than a safety measure.
“We should not be running our traffic enforcement as a revenue generator,” said Coun. Cathy Heron. She noted a mild winter probably resulted in more tickets being issued than normal.
“This is a very short term thing and until it actually does stabilize I would not want to increase the line item … and then come up short,” she said.
Coun. Cam MacKay was in favour of Hughes’ motion, saying the cash-cow argument is void if taxes are reduced as a result, as that way the money is being returned to the public.
The motion to increase the revenue projections for traffic fines was defeated in a 4-3 vote.
Hughes’ suggestion to take $267,422 in savings from the first four months of 2016 thanks to lower gas, diesel, natural gas and electricity costs and apply it to the tax requirement passed in a 5-2 vote.
Council then proceeded to approve that the final tax requirement for 2016 would be $92.9 million. The mill rate will be set in early May, and while any increases for municipal use will likely be very minimal, city staff are still figuring out how the provincial education requisition will impact the amounts collected.
