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No one, private sector or YMCA will operate the building (Lei Centre ) without a guarantee that they will not suffer a loss EVER.

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Rick,

I know that Milton has a prudent policy of delaying a year in spending slots revenue. But why does the town consistantly hold a surplus in the slots reserve? The 2015 budget shows a surplus of $3.6 million (p.424) which would make the rate stabilization reserve look a lot healthier without raising extra taxes.

Thanks

The target for the Lottery is one of the reserves that will I believe get a new target / analyzed next year, I'm guessing the target will go up. The current target of $5 million would be used in 1 year if we ever lose the casino revenue. The slots revenue is used for capital projects, small portion goes to the community fund, and I'm not by my computer now but I know in the past we've talked about some for the hospital, just can't remember if it was used or not.

Council is not supposed to "rely" on the slots revenue, because we know it could one day go poof. But in my opinion we've sort of gotten addicted to using that in our capital budget and if it did get in jeopardy we'd have a significant shortfall.

Thanks for the response.

I didn't question how the slots revenue is spent. Nor did I question the current policy of delaying a year in spending the slots revenue. What I would like to know is how anyone could point to a shortfall in the Rate Stabilization Reserve as a big issue while ignoring a $3.6 million surplus in the slots reserve. Balance the accounts.

Of course, the reserves and targets are a mess that hasn't been addressed by council since 2006. And council has to get control of spending before it destroys the 12 to 15% tax benefit we get from Mohawk.

Milton’s one-meeting budget deliberations are over for another year.

They started with a staff proposal for a 5.5% tax increase for 2015 and a list of possible reductions provided by staff. Working through the list, a few items were eliminated from the budget resulting in a tax increase of 5.0%.

In other years, that’s where they would stop working and approve a budget. This year, in spite of voting to keep most of the suggested cuts in the budget, council turned down the resulting 5.0% increase budget by a 9 to 2 vote. They then returned to the list of possible reductions, eliminated more, until a 3.1% increase budget was approved by an 8 to 3 vote.

The good news is that council worked harder than usual and kept the tax increase near inflation. The bad news is that they did it by cutting only items on the suggested list that included some important spending. A proposal to eliminate Saturday buses (not on the list) was rejected twice in favour of eliminating the extra funds for weed control.

IMO the best performances in budget discussions were from Malboeuf and Hamid ( ). Cluett went off script and managed to eliminate $55k from the capital budget for a bicycle statue. Krantz helped by repeating his caution for a near-inflation tax increase but had no suggestions for cuts. I wonder how many councillors actually read the budget report.

It's great to keep taxes low (near inflation). But I think you ignored some difficult questions here. How will you afford the local share of the hospital if the province rejects the idea of allowing Development Charges to pay for it? that 25-50& increase quoted in the budget is really high, even over a period of 10 years or so (broken down that's a 2.5-5% increase on top of what I'm sure will come because of inflation). And with talk of an interest rate hike sometime this year, you'd have to issue debentures now to take advantage of a low interest rate.

And the gas tax portion is going down as prices decline. How do you plan to replace the revenue? The reserves only go so far.

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Bank Loans (actually debentures) and possibly dipping into reserves where possible...I'm guessing their will be some future draw downs on slots reserves, it's against past policy but I'm fairly sure it will be changed. The province would never modify slots revenues anyways right?

For Federal Gas Tax, I believe currently they don't link it to the price of gas and its' currently indexed at 2% per year. Zeeshan will likely correct me if I'm wrong. Our plan is we're hoping the federal government doesn't notice that gas prices are going down and won't modify the gas tax fund

If they do, we always have our reserve funds to offset extra....oh wait...never mind...

On the other hand, the town (and the region) should spend below budget on petroleum-related costs such as transportation fuel, heating fuel, chemicals, asphalt, and capital projects.

http://www.insidehalton.com/news-story/ ... -increase/

Champion story on Mondays budget

Am I reading this correctly? What is wrong with you people?

You slashed the parks budget to control weeds? This was just increased last year, now were cutting again?

Didn’t the survey show people wanted better parks, and savings at libraries? Where’s the cuts to the library budget if things are so tight?

Gotta love the Mayor. “I will not raise taxes above inflation, not on my watch!!” as he raises taxes over inflation. He’s a pro who knows it’s the quotes in the paper that matter, and not the actual action.

Exactly. I'm done with that con job. Clearly the town only cares about our input if it agrees with their priorities.

One of the highlights of the budget meeting came near the end when councillors were looking for the last $200k of spending to cut.

Mayor Krantz suggested that councillors should duck these decisions and send the budget back for staff to find the cuts. The Treasurer was asked how she would handle this request. Linda Leeds (nobody’s fool and I’m sure not wanting the task) responded that she would take the $200k from the Rate Stabilization Reserve.

The look on Councillor Di Lorenzo’s face was priceless. Council went on to cut the dandelions (so to speak).

Thanks Garlis

btw I'm sure you noticed I didn't vote for the cut to turf maintenance.

I didn't agree with cutting another $200k from the budget either by again pulling more money out of our savings/reserves or by cutting turf maintenance.

But a majority voted differently so that's that. Of course a councillor could always change their mind in less then 2 weeks when this goes to be ratified. I'm hoping one does but it's unlikely.

I don't think ANY of the councillors were comfortable with cutting the last $200k from the dandelion budget but the list of potential cuts provided few options.

Councillor Malboeuf went off the list to suggest cutting Saturday transit in stead but that didn't work. He also went off the list and suggested that there may be fat in the budget for consultants and lawyers. That didn't work.

When the budget hits council, I would bet a solid majority would vote to return at least part of the dandelion budget if the motion included equivalent cuts elsewhere. There is almost 2 weeks to find fat that was not on staff's list of possible cuts.

I wish the video would just go online so people could actually see the votes

I don't think some are going to admit how they voted on particular items

You can ask me about any vote and I'll tell you how I voted and why