Sackvilles operating costs rise

The town of Sackville will spend more money in 2008 to ensure essential services are maintained and the various departments continue to run smoothly.

Town council approved its $8.2 million operating budget for the new year during its regular monthly meeting Monday night, up over $7.5 million last year due to higher operating costs.

Almost all departments did go up, for various reasons, said treasurer Michael Beal following the budget report.

With inflation and rising gas prices and power rates, our costs do go up every year.

Nearly every department is projecting increased expenses in 2008, with the biggest hikes seen in tourism and community development, public works, parks and recreation, as well as RCMP services.

Beal said fortunately the town is able to make up for most of these increased expenses with an increase to its tax base of 5.63 per cent, a rate set by the province which is made up of new construction, renovations and an increase to property assessments.

So because the town has more money coming in from the province, for the fourth straight year, local residents wont be hit with a hike from the town on their tax bills.

Sackvilles 2008 tax rate will be maintained at $1.535 per $100 of assessment, the same rate which was set back in 2004.

This means that the only changes property owners will see on their 2007 tax bill will be those instituted through changes in assessed value of their properties, stated Beal in his report.

The treasurer also noted that if the provincial tax assessments were to increase at the same level as the residential or commercial, the town would have more money available in its coffers and could look at reducing the tax rate.

The towns residential tax assessment has been increasing more than commercial and substantially more than provincial tax assessments . . . residential assessments have gone up an average of eight per cent over the last seven years while commercial have gone up over seven per cent, and provincial have gone up only two per cent, he stated.

Beal said the town of Sackville is unique in the province in that a large percentage of its properties are made up of provincial buildings (i.e. Mount Allison University) so an increase to the provincial assessment would benefit the municipality.

You can see a vast difference in assessment increases between the two categories, which does not help the town as provincial properties make up 30.5 per cent of our tax base and have the lowest average assessment by far.

The parks and recreation department will see an increase to its budget of over $300,000 in 2008, mostly due to the operating costs of the arena.

This is a new item for the town as in prior years we had paid only the net costs to the civic centre board, stated Beal. This is the total estimated expenses for the arena in 2008 for the arena-related accounts.

However the department is expected to make up for these costs with anticipated revenue from the arena and the elimination of the grant to the civic centre board ($117,000 in 2007).

The tourism and community development department anticipates it will see added expenses of more than $166,000 in its budget, mostly due to a new line item in the budget the 2008 Cultural Capital project ($127,820 represents the towns share).

Policing costs will again go up in the new year, this time by more than $43,000.

In policing, we will be budgeting a rate per RCMP officer of $119,000 in 2008. This is up from $117,000 per officer in 2007, Beal explained.

The town currently budgets for 10 officers for the municipal detachment but the RCMP has been at a complement of less than 10 officers since their startup. This has allowed them to be under budget each year, Beal added in his report.

In transportation, costs continue to go up for gas, vehicle repair and street patching.

An additional $120,000 has been set aside in the budget for those departments in 2008.

Expenses are also up in every department because of an increase in salary and benefits for the staff.

Again in 2007, the town was able to do the majority of its capital projects with capital-out-of-revenue funds.

This maintains our direction of the years gone by where we work towards elimination of the towns debt, noted Beal.

The town initiated its debt reduction program a number of years ago, where funds are transferred every year from the operating budget to the capital-out-of-revenue fund, which now sits at $890,000. This compares to an amount of just over $200,000 that was in that fund 10 years ago.

This will allow us to do our 2008 general capital projects with no or minimal borrowing, Beal wrote.

Continuing to commit to putting more money into capital out of revenue over the next several years will put the town in a very positive position for the future. Upon completion of the debt reduction program, we will be able to do substantially more capital projects each year with no borrowing and no interest cost to the taxpayers.

Extra copies of the 2008 operating budget are available at the front desk of town hall.