RCMP reserve to increase by at least $500,000

The Finance Committee will recommend a series of amendments to the 2008-2012 5 year plan to the full council next Monday. The subject of this report by the Manager of Finance is 'Amendment #1 to five year Financial Plan 2008-2012' which seems to indicate that there may be at least a future year end house keeping amendment to finalize any other significant changers that may have happened.

This is the first time this Council has utilized this amendment method as required by the Community Charter and it seems that it will become an annual method of reaffirming and reminding Council of decisions that they have made that have affected their original Public budget projections. This is a method that I have advocated for in the last 4 Annual Report Public Input sessions.

There are only 2 major transfers out of the 8 transfers that will be made if approved by Council. The first is a transfer of $344,335 to the 30th ave capital project (41st to Alexis Park Drive) from 3 different reserves. ($134,151 Casino Reserve, $176,647 Collection Facility Replacement Reserve and $33,537 DCC Reserve.)

The second is a new one to the Council that will transfer $500,000 of the forcasted RCMP surplus of $800,000 to the RCMP reserve. (Surplus is due to delay in recruitment of currently authorized positions.) If my calculations are correct this will be added to the $849,090 that was the readjusted amount in this reserve and bring the RCMP reserve to $1,349,090 with an apparent $300,000 2008 surplus still to be tranferred at year end. (As this is an estimation at the end of August I expect another $200,000 to be added in addition to the $300,000 current estimation by year end.)

This conforms to the newly reaffirmed Policy of Council (after several Don Quixote Rants) to transfer all surpluses of RCMP expenditures to the RCMP budget where they can be used only after an open vote of Council specifically in regard to this reserve.

As I maintained during the budget process the hiring of the additional 4 sargents, 4 watch clerks, and 1 records reviewer was unlikely to be completed until well into the summer of 2008 and therefore should have been costed as a conservative 1/2 year investment amount only. Unless I have missed the announcements there have being no Sargeants yet hired or promoted this year.