By Pepper Parr
July 26th, 2016
BURLINGTON, ON
Canadians find it rude to talk about money – and those with a lot of it take offence when you ask just how much they have.
For the rest of us – knowing what we are going to have to shell out in the months ahead is of both interest and concern.
Burlington has a Finance department that is seen as the best in the city. It pulls together the numbers and lays it all out and is very good about making the information available.
We are sometime away from actually striking a budget for 2017/18 but the documents that lead up to that happening have for the most part been put together.
Set out below is a chart the Finance people call their Program Source summary – which means how much money each of the program areas the city operate is going to require.
Some detail, provided by the city is set out beneath the chart.
The amount the city spent in 2015/16 in each of their program areas and what they propose to spend in 2016/17
Human Resources costs are up 2.8% primarily due to increases to union and non‐union compensation.
Operating/Minor Capital Equip. The 0.6% increase is primarily due to higher electricity rates and increased costs for parts and equipment. These increases are partially offset by lower expenses on general office equipment.
Purchased Services Decrease of 0.9% is attributable to lower external service requirements. These savings are partially offset by higher computer, software and vendor hosted solutions as well as increased snow removal expenses.
Corp. Expenditures/Provisions Increase of 6.7% is mostly due to the infrastructure renewal levy and debt charges incurred for the accelerated renewal program. Additionally debt charges for the Joseph Brant Hospital are offset from the reserve fund (offset by recovery in General Revenues & Recoveries).
Controllable Revenues Controllable Revenues are down 0.6% due to realignment of Transit Fare revenue to be in line with actual receipts, which is partially offset by improved revenues in other services.
General Revenues & Recoveries The increase of 4.2% in General Revenues & Recoveries is mostly due to increase in Hydro dividend and Federal Grants, in addition to a recovery for debt charges from Joseph Brant Hospital reserve fund.
City manager James Ridge is guiding his team in producing the first budget that is all his – the last budget had major development done before Ridge took up his position. He gets all the credit or the blame for this one.
Director of Finance Joan Ford does a great job of providing the data and her department does a good job of collecting the taxes as well. It’s the spending side that is causing the long term financial stress. Ms Ford doesn’t determine the spending.
Seeing those number in a slightly different way we see what the spending increase is year over year. From 2015/16 to 2016/17 the increase will be 4.89% Well over inflation.
The 2015/16 budget on the left, what is going to be spent to arrive at the proposed 2016/17 budget.
