Bruce Walkinshaw - Penticton Western News Published: April 13, 2010 6:00 PM
Reducing taxes is detail-orientated work. Continuing with its ongoing series of special budget meetings, Penticton council spent Monday evening cutting about a quarter of the city’s proposed 2010 capital budget — rejecting staff recommendations to fund eight supplemental capital projects and initiating a program that will potentially eliminate the majority of jobs in the city’s meter-reading department. The meeting began with a list of 11 projects placed on the firing line by city staff after council directed them last week to reduce proposed capital spending by 25 per cent. “We have come back to council now with recommendations as to where we feel the cuts could occur with minimum disruption on city operations,” said city treasurer Doug Leahy.
The $657,135 hit-list contained seemingly innocuous items such as new table-skirting at the Penticton Trade and Convention Centre, to more substantial works, particularly $250,000 for road rehabilitation at Valley View Road and $226,635 to replace an undersized storm sewer pipe on Warren Avenue. The only item that any on council tried to save was $50,000 for a bike network implementation program. “This is something that we have to be thinking ahead (about) and planning, especially with the college coming on,” said Coun. Andrew Jakubeit. However, only councillors Judy Sentes and Garry Litke supported his efforts. A subsequent motion to spend $20,000 to extend the bike lane on Government Street to the SOEC and Lakeshore Drive passed with an additional vote from Coun. Mike Pearce. The items on the list were then unanimously deferred to next year’s budget process. There was some discussion over whether the postponed capital projects could result in a corresponding reduction in the city’s engineering labour costs, something director of development and engineering Mitch Moroziuk said he would look into.
Next up was a $289,500 list of supplemental capital projects city staff wanted council to consider. “There were items in the supplemental capital list staff felt very strongly that should be brought back to council’s attention either from a safety point of view, from an efficiency point of view, from an effectiveness point of view (or) customer service point of view,” explained Leahy. However, some members of council took issue with the fact that items being advanced as matters of safety were presented as supplemental capital so late in the budget process. “If I don’t know about safety when I’m voting on other things that are extra,” lectured Pearce, “then we are in serious trouble because one of our main concerns is legal liability and the safety of our taxpayers.” “If that is our practice of doing it in that manner, then I would suggest that we need to revisit the practice,” agreed Sentes.
Of the list of the 13 items, eight were voted down while three relating to service efficiencies were approved. A request for $25,000 to pave the front of the PTCC with concrete was also sent to the Public Works Department. Council then allocated $90,000 to commence the demolition of the trilogy of buildings located near Nanaimo Hall, before approving a $275,000 project to replace all the city’s electrical meters with new ones. “What (the new meters) will allow us to do is considerably reduce the amount of time it takes us to read meters within the electrical department,” said Leahy. “Eventually, we will be in a position where we can have one truck that will go around the entire city and read both the electrical meters and the water meters at the same time,” said Moroziuk.“We (won’t) need to own that truck because it will be used a few days every second month and that is it. So, we would simply work with another municipality and try to do it all at once with one truck.”
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