City of Vernon's Financial Statements coming online shortly? (And detailed Variance report?) (And Annual Report ?)

City of Vernon's Financial Statements for 2006 Coming Shortly !
Originally posted Aug 21

I went to the Audit Committee meeting last Thursday. The Auditors presented their full report to the committee and the delay and the responses to the delay were presented by the Auditors and the Financial Administrator respectively.

The 2006 Financial Statements will finally be presented to the City Council at the next meeting and will be available to the public shortly thereafter. The variance report that details the budget variances will be given to the councillors at the next meeting. I have been assured that it will be similar to the 2005 report in content so individual detailed analysis will be possible. (2005 Year End Detailed Variance Analysis - 1.13MB ) and it will be posted on the City's website. Also the 2007-2011 5 year financial Plan is to be posted to the website shortly so the list starting from 2004 will be updated.

The Annual report and public input meeting which was required to be complete by June 30 will follow 2 weeks or more after the report is made available. This report will present the financial statements, a summary of 2005 and 2006 objectives and results, a 2007 objectives section, statement of remuneration and expenses for both Politicians and staff in excess of $75,000, suppliers accounts greater than $25,000, permissive tax exemptions etc.

Departments ordered to reduce spending

By RICHARD ROLKE Morning Star Staff Jan 10 2007 http://www.vernonmorningstar.com/
A Vernon councillor is concerned that internal budget tightening will cut city activities to the bone. Coun. Jack Gilroy was the lone opponent Monday to instructing each department to reduce its operating budget by one per cent as a way of keeping taxes low. “We took a five per cent budget cut a long time ago and it caused problems,” said Gilroy. “Some departments can cut one per cent.”

Gilroy, who is a former deputy fire chief with the city, said most departments’ budgets are connected to wages and it is unrealistic to think that any money can be saved. However, the majority of council disagreed with Gilroy. “It never hurts to look for inefficiencies,” said Coun. Juliette Cunningham. The finance committee recommended to council that each department look within its budget to find cost-savings so the 2007 tax increase remains at 2.84 per cent and not the 6.81 per cent proposed by staff in December.

Staff suggested there be an additional $588,858 in expenditures in 2007 — mainly capital works — but council members stated it would be unacceptable to cover them through a general tax hike. Beyond savings, the remainder of the $588,858 in additions could be covered through using a $780,000 surplus. While staff look at ways to trim back their activities, Coun. Pat Cochrane wants to make sure the politicians do their part. “Will members of council look at their own expenses and ways to reduce expenses?” he said. In fact, council’s budget, as part of the administration department, will be part of the overall process.

Don Quixote Note: at Post Mayor and Council salaries should have budget increases cut in half ! I explain that when the budget was started in early fall they had a 3% inflation factor built in. The most recent Nov. CPI has come in at 1.4%. (Enough said)

As to the assertion that staff added the 'additional $588,858 in expenditures in 2007 ' please see the post on Dec 20 DON"T BLAME STAFF FOR THIS ONE. in which I displayed the error in this assertion in reply to an earlier article of the local paper on the same date.

VERNON REMAINS 2ND Highest RESIDENTIAL Taxes in Valley

These tables are from Provincial Figures available at http://www.mcaws.gov.bc.ca/lgd/infra/tax_rates/tax_rates2006.htm

(originally posted oct 9/06)

The image below illustrates various ways of comparing the taxes on an average house in each community. I have been assured by the Provincial Statistician that their method of comparing the average house Value was implemented to have the same consistency throughout the provincial numbers. In Vernon's case she says "We took the single family residential assessed value ($2,500,636,780) and divided it by the total single family residential number of occurrences (10,184) to determine the average house. We have calculated it in this manner so that the same application is applied across the province and the figures are more verifiable than previously." (Using Vernon's average house value of 230,072 given on tax notices would NOT change Vernon's tax position in these charts).

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ClICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Businesses in Vernon reduce municipal portion of residential taxes by 21.79% BEST IN LAST 6 Years.

What is the effect of having business in our city? As we increase our non-residential tax base do we reduce the tax burden on residential tax payers? The table below shows the effect that Business (etc) has on our residential tax rate. The higher the assist factor the more taxes are reduced to the residential taxpayer. The last table illustrates the progress in Vernon from 2000 to 2006. (The business assist factor © is a way of measuring how increased non residential property assessments in our community affects the residential tax base. It is a different measure than the tax ratio method although there is some correlation.)
(Oct 6 OriginalPosting)
CLICK TO ENLARGE TABLE