By Hayley Ferguson

Redcliff council reviewing 2020 operating budget

Nov 6, 2019 | 5:19 PM

Redcliff, AB – Redcliff Town Council met on Wednesday to start reviewing their 2020 operating budget.

With the council believing that they will not be seeing much provincial funding, Mayor Dwight Kilpatrick says that the goal was to not make many changes from the 2019 budget.

“The provincial budget has alluded to the fact that our funding is going to be cut. The down loading is about to start. So we have to go in very conservative because there’s still only one taxpayer and that’s the public and ourselves out there. So it’s a very low key budget this year,” he said.

Although the numbers aren’t official yet, to make up for the loss, Kilpatrick says that residents can expect “minimal increase” in taxes and services.

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“Water rates, sewer rates slightly up. But right now that looks like about five dollars a month.”

Kilpatrick says it will take some time before those numbers are official.

“Whatever changes we make today have to be fine-tuned. After that, we really don’t strike the budget until we get our provincial requisition for school and all of that. Which will be sometime next year,” he continued. “Normally what happens is we go through the budget, we get our act together then we wait to hear from other people. We start running January on an interim budget based on what we decided and then we finalize it as soon as the provincial numbers come in.”

Also discussed in the meeting was the new steps in finding a new municipal manager.

Late last month Arlos Crofts, the current municipal manager, announced that he would be leaving the position after six years.

With his final month being December, Kilpatrick says that the council has decided to bring on a consultant to help make the hiring decision.

“We’ve put out requests to half a dozen to send us back some proposals. So we will be reviewing proposals and hopefully going forward with getting a consultant on board to help us with finding a new Arlos.”