(File Photo/northeastNOW Staff)

By Mat Barrett

Melfort Council

Financial reports discussed at Melfort council meeting

Nov 5, 2019 | 3:04 PM

The City of Melfort held their Regular Council Meeting on Monday, Nov. 4, with some conversation around the financial reports.

It was reported that the City is a little over budget on a section of the Works and Utilities portion of their budget. The main culprit for the overspending was a ‘Crawler’ that is used at the landfill. Some repairs were needed on the vehicle and it cost a bit more than expected.

Councillor, and Finance Committee Chair Trent Mitchell said after the council meeting they aren’t concerned about the higher than expected spending and they believe it can be managed through normal operations.

“With any type of equipment maintenance, you never know what’s going to happen right,” Mitchell told northeastNOW. “So you can anticipate and maintain as best as possible but there’s always the odd instance where cost overruns take place when you’re repairing fairly large pieces of equipment.”

There was some other equipment that needed to be repaired which also contributed to the over budget spending. So too was the ongoing issue of water loss due to old connections and water main breaks. The city hopes to repair more aging water lines as and when it secures federal and provincial infrastructure funding.

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Mitchell explained the issue of repairing equipment was something they have to talk about with budget talks approaching, but they can never really plan for large repairs.

“We have a large fleet of equipment,” he said. “So there’s often issues that arise where you don’t anticipate everything on the annual basis.”

City manager Ryan Danberg told northeastNOW that while there were some higher than expected costs associated with vehicle repairs and increased costs associated with water leaks and service connection, the overall city budget is in a surplus.

Danberg said the bottom-line surplus of all funds is $406,000, and he noted the City funds the capital programs out of operating surpluses, so they often budget for small surpluses in each fund.

According to Danberg, the deficit reported in the council meeting in the Utility Fund is manageable within normal fiscal operations.

Meanwhile, with the calendar turning to November, council will begin their budget discussions in the coming weeks. According to Mitchell, they’ll have a Committee of the Whole meeting to discuss some budget impacts next week which will be their preliminary talks about taxes and other pieces of the coming budget.

(Editor’s note: the article was changed to remove incorrect budget numbers initially provided to northeastNOW, and to add clarification from Ryan Danberg)

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mat.barrett@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @matbarrett6