Last-minute cuts proposed for city budget

Two Brandon councillors made last-minute proposals on Friday to lower the city’s 6.6 per cent recommended property tax hike ahead of today’s final day of budget deliberations.

Coun. Glen Parker (Ward 9) proposed a one per cent reduction in staff salary and wage costs citywide as a way of reducing the budget.

The cut would represent about $460,000 in savings, he said, adding it would include all city staff with the exception of police.

Parker said he didn’t think the proposal would pass but mentioned it during the meeting to have the discussion with council.

“This wasn’t a hill to die on,” he said.

After the meeting, he told the Sun that the proposal “was a bit of a shot to remind administration that we have to be lean, and just to try and encourage the organization to operate efficiently and look for efficiencies where they can.”

The proposal wouldn’t reduce existing staff salaries, but would realize savings by managing new hiring, part-time work and the amount of overtime employees work, he said.

Troy Tripp, the city’s director of finance, said the proposal would decrease the property tax increase by “about 1.2 per cent.”

Earlier this week, Parker had said he would like to get the tax increase closer to the five per cent mark.

“I would like to get there,” but “we’re kind of limited in what we can do, to be honest,” he said. A reduction of staff salaries and putting less money into reserves are ways that can happen, he added.

At the meeting, Coun. Shawn Berry (Ward 7) said he would “certainly support” Parker’s proposal, which is yet to be officially put forward as a motion.

Coun. Tyson Tame said he sees the intent when it comes to efficiencies but added he wouldn’t support it.

“I really lean towards retention and burnout … and we have to keep in mind that this budget is pre-scrubbed before it gets to us,” the Ward 10 councillor said during the meeting.

Coun. Bruce Luebke (Ward 6) also said he would vote against the proposal as presented.

Parker said it was more of an “11th hour” recommendation, in case council needed to find room in the budget.

“Did I think it was going to go forward and pass? Not a chance,” he said.

Parker offered to remove the proposal, but Berry said he would like to speak about it again and would add it back if Parker removed it.

“It’s a very doable thing that we can do that again saves us over half a million dollars and one per cent on a tax bill,” Berry said after the meeting, highlighting that the savings could come in unfilled jobs. “Anything like that, that we can do without really hurting anything … I’m in favour of it.”

Berry said he thinks there’s “wiggle room” to get closer to the six per cent mark.

“I think we’re going to have some interesting talks.”

In another move to lower the property tax increase, Coun. Greg Hildebrand (Ward 5) proposed that the city reduce the funding of the Brandon Police Service by the cost of one sergeant’s salary.

When asked, Hildebrand said he didn’t have a dollar figure for how much savings that would be, but would have it today for the end of budget deliberations.

He said that the added support of cadets and other organizations, and the opening of BPS headquarters’ holding cells recently, are the reasons for his proposal.

After the meeting, Mayor Jeff Fawcett said he doesn’t expect the proposed 6.6 per cent property tax increase to change much today.

“I don’t expect big impacts on the budget … because we have all our amendments in and now it’s just discussion on what we’re doing,” Fawcett said.

“We did have a pretty good idea going into this budget (of) what we were going to be seeing. It’s not going to be a major swing.”

He said he could see the tax increase going up today, although it wouldn’t be a significant rise if it did happen.

“It’s not going to 10 (per cent). It’s going to be a little bit. We’re not dealing with very big issues,” he said.

“Now it’s just the fine tuning.”

Administration’s 6.6 per cent proposal is significantly lower than the 11.3 per cent increase recommended at the start of the month. Of that 11.3 per cent increase, only 10.6 per cent would have actually been paid through property tax increases.

The proposed increase was lowered mainly because council used $1.1 million from a $1.5-million surplus and the province gave the city slightly more than $1 million to fund three projects. Council decided to implement a food recycler program last week worth $25,000, which slightly raised the tax increase.

Councillors also debated how to allocate the remaining $400,000 of surplus money from 2025, including whether it should be used to further lower the tax increase or for another purpose.

In the morning, BPS requested a seven per cent increase in its funding — or $1.3 million more than the city currently provides.

BPS board chair Deb Arpin told council again on Friday that the current proposed budget is “bare bones.”

She said she hopes that the city will approve the seven per cent increase as requested.

Most of that increase is based on rising salaries, fleet maintenance and the creation of the digital evidence management section, which would also require three additional staff members and one sworn officer.

BPS Deputy Chief Greg Hebert told council that the police service is looking to have body cameras start rolling out in April and have the program completely rolled out by September, “unless things go badly.”

The digital evidence management section is needed for the proper storage of the videos taken by officer body cameras, along with other recordings. It would also save BPS members from making regular trips to Winnipeg for digital evidence and help them send evidence to be used in the judicial system.

Hebert said BPS is hoping to increase its number of officers, which currently sits at 111 sworn staff, although he didn’t have a number of how many new officers that would include. That potential increase comes as the city grows and “there continues to be increased demands for the police service,” Hebert said.

Fawcett said the city making decisions at budget meetings during the month has helped simplify the deliberations process.

A large portion of the morning of Friday’s meeting included presentations from department heads. The presentations included positives from 2025 and highlighted goals for this year like housing projects, infrastructure and recreation.

Today’s meeting is scheduled to start at 9 a.m.

Coun. Barry Cullen (Ward 3) wasn’t at Friday’s meeting.

» alambert@brandonsun.com