By Andrew de Souza

Chamber outlines budget concerns

Jan 12, 2011 | 11:04 AM

The city’s Chamber of Commerce is hoping for more transparency, less debt and lower taxes for the city and its businesses in the future.

During public budget presentations on Monday, Prince Albert and District Chamber of Commerce CEO Bergen Price brought forward concerns from the more than 500 member businesses.

Transparency of city-operated sites

The first issue brought up was the chamber wanted to make it mandatory for city-operated facilities to disclose financial statements before they could make funding requests. Price said the intent was to ensure the facilities would try harder to find other sources of revenue.

“Our membership expects these businesses to be creative and responsible so that expenses are covered by revenue rather that by taxpayers,” said Price.

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Councillors agreed in principle with Price’s suggestion but Coun. Martin Ring said even with greater transparency, there wasn’t much room for increasing revenues.

“We’re already being told by a number of groups that say we charge too much yet we’re operating them at 65-70 per cent cost recovery,” said Ring. “I don’t know of a city out there that runs facilities at 100 per cent cost recovery and I don’t know that we can afford it.”

Deal with debt

Price then called for the city to deal with its growing debt and create a reduction strategy.

“The chamber would recommend city administration and council develop and publically disclose a strategy to service the long-term debt while maintaining infrastructure in the city that needs upgrading,” said Price.

Mayor Jim Scarrow said the city’s debt was manageable. He said there were some things that the city simply had to go into debt for, particularly water treatment.

The type of debt we have is ideal debt,” said Scarrow. “First of all most of the debt is legislated and required by law and if you want to have a Walkteron, we could do what was done in the past and ignore the water treatment plant.”

Scarrow also clarified that the city had an unused $12-million line of credit that while untapped, counted towards the city’s liabilities.

Keep taxes low

Lastly, Price said he wanted the city to be cautious with its proposed tax increase, especially when it came to the commercial tax. He said keeping low would help keep the city competitive.

“With increases in CPP, and other federal taxes being paid by our local businesses, a high mill rate would detract from the momentum gained in 2010,” he said.

City councillors will be debating the city’s 2011 budget on Jan 14-15.

adesouza@panow.com