Friday, March 30, 2012

6th Budget Meeting - City of Williams Lake

Last night - Williams Lake City Council met for the 6th time to discuss the 2012 Budget & 2012-2016 5 Year Financial Plan

However - the public was notified, via Twitter, that the Agenda for last night's budget meeting was available, 2 hours before the meeting and that clearly does not allow the public enough time to review the Agenda and provide appropriate input at the meeting.  If the Agenda had been available either last Friday (as had been done previously) or even Monday/Tuesday - that would have allowed sufficient time for the public to review budget items.  In the 'positive news' department - Council at their 5th Budget Meeting allowed the public to provide input prior to Council beginning its' budget deliberations and I hope this practice will continue... :)

Meanwhile, according to the minutes from the 5th Budget Meeting (Councillor Hughes was absent from this meeting):

1) Council unable to agree on several items including new planner position at WL City Hall & 'Wraps' for Utility Cabinets' - if all of Council was available then Council should be able to make a decision on these items.  Please note for the Planner position - Councillors' Geoff Bourdon and Sue Zacharias are in favour, Councillor Bonnell and Mayor Cook are opposed and no word on how Councillor Rathor feels about the new Planner position

2) There is public support for the Woodland & South Lakeside Drive projects and the public wants to see these projects go forward as a priority

3) South Lakeside Drive's budget increased "in principle" to $2 million with Councillor Geoff Bourdon opposed.  Council last night was to review how to achieve this


4) Councillor Geoff Bourdon was opposed also to a review of the Staff Training Budgets.  Councillor Ivan Bonnell however was in favour of this, as was a majority of Council

The next steps are:

April - finalize budget for presentation to the public for their formal input
May - Pass Budget and Tax Rates Bylaws prior to May 15th


SBF

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