After whittling down yet another amended budget put forward by municipal administrators; after cutting and/or reallocating money for social and emergency services; and after once again postponing action on perilously underfunded municipal reserves, Jasper Municipal Council has passed a 2021 operational budget.

Months after staff proposed to council a “best practices” budget and a “fixed costs” budget—the former which would work to future-proof infrastructure and the latter which would maintain 2019 service levels—the majority of councillors were still unhappy with what was in front of them and voted to make further cuts to the proposed operational budget’s already fat-free bone. 

Some, like councillor Paul Butler, who came to the April 20 meeting armed with an omnibus motion of reductions and reallocations, were troubled by a sticker shock of the near-$1 million increase over 2019 levels. 

“I think with this budget we’re spending too much,” Butler said.

Others, like councillor Rico Damotoa, who wanted the exact percentage increase of the amended budget before he could vote on it, claimed not to have enough information to make a decision, even after more than five months of discussion on the matter.

“We’re talking about the palatable increase to the overall budget,” Damota said.

As such, on the strength of an alliance which included councillors Butler, Damota, Helen Kelleher-Empey and Bert Journault,  council passed a series of austerity motions on April 20. Councillors Scott Wilson, Jenna McGrath and Mayor Richard Ireland’s opposing votes had little effect. Before recording the decisions, Ireland used his power as the meeting’s chair to break up the motions brought forward by councillor Butler. Butler had brought his motions to the budget discussion with no prior notice to his fellow councillors, the result being that some felt ill-prepared to gauge how the proposed reallocations would affect municipal departments. 

“I can’t vote on these when I don’t know the impact they’ll have,” Councillor McGrath said. 

McGrath said after last year’s budget process, in which she was persuaded to vote for sweeping reductions so that local ratepayers would get a break during a difficult, pandemic-affected recession, she heard from residents who objected to the cuts. 

“My learning experience was that residents of Jasper wished for their services to remain untouched,” she said. 

Mayor Ireland spoke in opposition to the package of motions that would chop $70,000 from emergency services, $60,000 from the culture and recreation department, $25,000 from emergency social services and reallocate COVID recovery funding to make up for daycare shortages. He said a budget is a guide, and resisted considering items line by line.

“A budget is in part an economic document but it’s also a political statement,” he said. “I’d like to move forward to show we can manage our own affairs.”

Butler, however, moved forward with what he saw as a need to control spending, saying his concerns stemmed from a significant increase in the net operating deficit since council’s November conversations. He said his experience in talking to ratepayers was markedly different from that of councillor McGrath’s. 

“I have been experiencing a great deal of push back about the size of the operating budget,” he said.

CAO Bill Given also pushed back, albeit in diplomatic fashion. He responded to councillor Damota’s claims that the total increase to the tax requisition was not presented in a clear fashion.

“That number has not been hidden, going back to the unamended document in March,” Given said. 

As part of an effort to include financial relief for residential and non-residential tax payers, administration built into the budget a one-time property tax credit of $1 million and a COVID Recovery Reserve of $775,000. The tax credit will be automatically applied to all properties. As for the recovery reserve, which was created to assist Jasperites affected by the pandemic in a more targeted way, the specifics on how that assistance will be rolled out have yet to be decided.

In the end, council approved an operating budget with a net tax envelope of $8,891,323, which represents an increase of 11 per cent increase over 2019 levels. 

Bob Covey //thejasperlocal@gmail.com