The City of Merritt held an open consultation on April 23 at the Civic Centre to discuss their five year financial plan.

Mayor Susan Roline, several councillors and several city staff members were on hand to discuss the proposed city budget for 2013-17.

“Under the Community Charter, every year we have to come up with a five year financial plan,” said Roline. “We’re set pretty good. We’ve got some good reserves built up in our key funds. We’ve got some small ones we’d like to build up more, but overall we’re sitting pretty healthy.”

Roline said the city infrastructure has been added to and improved upon over a period of time.

“Not everything went in at once, so as we added on to the sections, like the sewer we did in the 1960s, we won’t need to make any major replacements for a number of years,” she said.”

According to the plan, the city will have revenues of about $14.5 million for 2013. The biggest source of revenue is property taxation, which will net $6.5 million. Second is sale of services, which will bring the city an anticipated $2.2 million. The total operating expenses for the city is expected to be $14.3 million. The top city expenditures include RCMP at $2.27 millionfollowed by administration at $145 million. In order to meet expenses, the city is anticipated a tax revenue increase of $119,620 or 2.25 per cent.

“That’s the tax revenue increase we will need to meet our operating expenses and be able to provide all the services we provide to the community,” said Roline. “Our police contract has gone up. Our union contracts have gone up. Fuel costs have gone up. To meet all those needs we need another $119,620 for 2013.”

At the forum, the city also showed off plans for several upcoming projects including adding a lacrosse box and concession/washroom at Central Park.

“It’s been about 25 years now that the city has owned that park,” said Roline. “The washrooms there have been an Atco trailer that was put in 23 years ago. That has definitely been outgrown. It’s time to replace that with a permanent, solid structure. That park gets used a lot. It’s one of our busiest parks.”

The city will also be adding a new water treatment building at the public works yard, and adding bigger bays for the fire hall.

Pat Sibilleau, manager of financial services for the City of Merritt, presented the budget and said the city is in strong shape heading into the next cycle.

“We’ve got some good projects in the plans and logical progression on those projects,” she said.

Sibilleau said that the city leans on long-term borrowing to pay for its bigger projects.

“The logic behind that is that we want the people who are going to be using the facility to pay for it. If we billed for it and paid for it out of tax dollars in year one, the people who are going to use it for the next 20 or 30 or 40 years basically get a free ride and we pay high, up-front costs. If we spread it out it’s more even for all residents, current and future.”

The city has a steady debt load of between $8 and 10 million every year explained Sibilleau. “As we pay off debt, we then borrow some more,” she said. “As long as we stay consistent in there (we’re OK). The city has a very good ability to borrow. We’re nowhere close to the limit we could borrow.”

Sibilleau said the city isn’t sure yet how the tax revenue increase will break down and who will be paying the lion’s share.

“The assessments on residential have dropped a little, but the assessments on industrial type properties have gone up,” she said. “So when we actually do the distribution of which taxes will come from which class of tax property, it could change. Some might see their taxes go up, some might see their taxes go down. We know we need to collect 2.25 per cent more. How that will be distributed, we don’t know at this point.”