A city councillor says she believes it might be time for cuts this upcoming budget season.
While the 2012 budget isn’t available until January, there are millions of dollars in requests and commitments already.
City police and the District of Thunder Bay Social Services Administrative Board budgets are asking for more than $1 million increases each while Superior North EMS needs a new ambulance service for $1 million.
Thunder Bay Fire and Rescue wants to start implementing its master plan that includes new fire stations. Those requests are in addition to a $2.5 million commitment from city council to tackle the infrastructure deficit with another $1.4 million being considered for projects brought to council throughout the past year.
Coun. Rebecca Johnson said once council agrees to consider a budget request, it usually means the request will be approved.
“That’s a huge amount of money,” Johnson said of the $1.4 million.
“We have to really seriously look at services. Do we cut back on services? Nobody really wants services cut and I respect that but at the same point in time do we have too many staff? We have to seriously look at staffing.
“There are a lot of things this year more than we’ve ever done before that we seriously have to take a look at. We can no longer just continue to pay for what we think we want or need we have to look at every line.”
“I would be prepared to seriously look if it’s necessary to cut back on staffing and cut back on services if that’s what’s needed.”
Johnson said a zero per cent increase isn’t realistic, but she hopes that the jump will be less than 1.5 per cent. Anything more is unacceptable, she added.
“I do not see that the community will accept that whether it’s a resident or whether it will be a business I just don’t see that happening.”
Although Johnson cautioned that it’s hard to say what could be cut without seeing the budget, she pointed to snow removal when there is little snow in the city as an example of inefficiencies.
“Does that mean that maybe a couple of people aren’t working because we don’t have the work for them to do then so be it then we don’t have those people employed during those periods of time,” she said.
But Coun. Andrew Foulds said the budget is about balancing all of the needs of the community. It’s hard to cut staff without compromising service.
“We haven’t even seen the budget yet so really that’s a philosophical argument at this point in time,” he said.
“The bottom line is, is this what are we going to cut? I can’t see how cutting staff is going to improve service, which the public demands.”
Foulds said based on the previous citizen survey, 86 per cent of people said they were happy with services, 73 per cent thought they were getting good value for tax dollars and almost half of the people surveyed couldn’t identify where they would like to see cuts.
Council will receive the 2012 budget in mid January.
