Final budget highlights

This is the final budget process with a different approach to the 2011 CSRD budget. Historical the Directors received an 85 page document on budget day and previous time to study it was limited. As well Directors would be involved in individual creation of budgets on specific functions but not see the impacts to the whole budget In this budget workshop the order of  review was to go the through the region wide functions, then electoral areas functions , joint(shared) functions and finally areas of specific electoral functions.  This way of doing the budget uses much more time but allows better decisions to be made

Highlights:

                Over all the budget decreased by 16%, over all taxation increased by 1.7%, Payroll increased by 13%,  much of the reason for the increase is that there were retiring people in management and these now have been replaced.  As well there were increases such as MSP, WCB, etc.

Recycling – increased from $940,000 to 1.2 million. This is an expensive function, people have to understand this. Cost of recycling is related to how much people are recycling. The cost of Solid Waste Plan (SWP) has been expensive but over the long run has been cost effective. In other areas the North Okanagan Regional District (NORD) has not put any money away for closure of their land fill sites and their tipping fees are going in to the $100.00s with increases going up 10-15% per year.  The system we have now is property owners pay for recycling and tipping fees pay for SWP.  Geographical Information System (GIS) is a high tech function utilizes a lot of expensive hard ware. It will over the long term be returning profits of a sort. In the near term it will provide better service to the public, improving tracking and correspondence. A leased vehicle is apportioned through 3 functions; by law enforcement 30%, Planning Services 40% and building inspection 30%. Truck expenses such as leasing, ICBC, fuels and servicing will be equally shared at those previous percentages. The reason for leasing a vehicle is that the cost of paying vehicle costs from employees is calculated to be sustainable savings. The leasing arrangement will be tracked to see if it is an actual savings in the end.   Search & rescue- increase in costs went to a new facility and rescue equipment. The volunteers they do a very good job there are about 2,400 volunteer hours dedicated to Shuswap Search rescue the cost comes to about $2.80 per residence.

Fire Departments have a different way of calculating their costs.  SCBAs, turn out gear, anything that costs less $10,000 will now be “minor capital”. Major Capital will now be; building, trucks, the large items over $10,000. Supplies would things that wear out quickly or are disposable such as name tags, gloves and boots to name a few items.

                Budgets are complicated and I have only offered a small insight to how it is laid out but I hope it helps a small bit in understanding how it works.