Prince George, BC – Six sessions have been set aside for City Council’s 2012 public budget discussions, beginning with the first two on Wednesday of this week…

The number of sessions is down from the eight sessions held last year, and 10 the year before, but Finance and Audit Committee Chair, Cameron Stolz, says significantly more prepatory work has been done to get to this point.  He says Council gave direction to staff back in October as to what they’d like the budget to come in at, a further meeting in January instructed staff to hold the tax increase to 3.12-percent, and, now, it’s time to review the budgets of the different departments.

Gone are the department overviews this year that had started the deliberations on each City department’s budget.  "The biggest portion of our budget meetings previously in the last few years has been more around services that are being delivered, as opposed to the budget for those services," says Stolz.

He says this year’s deliberations will focus on the numbers, while considering changes to service levels will occur over the course of the coming year.  "At this point in the budget process, it’s very challenging to be able to make significant changes – we’ve already seen in January, what it takes to make a significant change."  City Council announced nine layoffs and the discontinuation of 18 vacant positions to cut $2-million dollars from the City’s budget.

"For next year," the chair of the Finance and Audit Committee says, "I think we’ll have to see when the Core Services Review comes back and see if there is a need for further cuts or, perhaps, there’s an opportunity for us to obtain budgetary reductions through efficiencies."

Despite tight budgetary constraints, Stolz says he still expects lively discussion during the two sessions this Wednesday (at 3:30pm and 6pm) and the two on Wednesday, February 22nd, in preparation for the final sessions to discuss outstanding issues on Monday, February 27th.

"I can speak to one (service) enhancement I personally see coming forward and that is the enhancement to fully fund the PG Air Roundtable, the City has a commitment there that, at present, has been discontinued and I would like to see that added back into the budget."

With the reduction in the number of budget sessions, the number of opportunities for public input has also declined – from 10-minutes at the start of every session – to one 15-minute session at 6pm this Wednesday and another at 6pm on the 22nd.  Stolz says, historically, there’s only been one or two people to speak at these sessions and he feels the City has done exceptional public consultation for this year’s budget, pointing to a public session at the Civic Centre last October with City staff present to outline the budgetary options that allowed city residents to provide their input.