What's on the agenda this week at council?

Tax increase, funding for the homeless & financial transparency among topics to be discussed in second meeting of 2024.

Council will be back at city hall this week after a rare three week break. Council has only had a single meeting so far in 2024*, so this week’s agenda is packed with many pressing items. Today, I’ll summarize the major issues that will be discussed and voted on Tuesday night.

‘*According to procedural bylaw, council is to have two meetings per month (except for July and August and except for emergency circumstances). But for some reason council cancelled the January 2nd meeting resulting in only one January meeting.

Approval of the budget

The most important item to be discussed this week is the approval of the 2024 municipal budget. In December council agreed to alleviate a little bit of the tax increase by lowering the amount they give Au Chateau for 2024 in light of their stalled re-development project.

Now, council is set to approve the final budget which will see taxes go up 4.74%. This will be the second straight year with such an increase (last year’s increase was 4.75%). By far the biggest contributor to the year-after-year increases is human resources. HR expenditures are set to go up 9% in 2024 to $9.9M. This line item has now jumped 18% over two years from $8.4M in 2022 to $9.9M in 2024.

Capital Projects Budget

Council is also set to approve the 2024 Capital Projects Budget, however the online agenda does not provide the actual document that council is set to approve. The capital projects budget presented by staff in November has a variety of controversial line items that were debated during a 3+ hour meeting on November 23rd.

Among the debated items was over $300,000 to repair the municipal Verner building, over $300,000 to enhance the Sturgeon Falls arena entrance and $50,000 for pickleball courts. At the November 23rd meeting, council was set to have further discussion on these topics however these deliberations don’t appear to have occured yet.

I inquired with municipal staff to receive a copy of the Capital Projects Budgets that will be voted on this week and if there were any changes from the November document. Staff advised me that this document would not be publicly available.

Funding for No More Tears

The non-profit community organization that has been helping the city’s homeless population is asking council for financial assistance. The group has been hosting soup kitchens and outreach services in the community since 2022. The group indicates that there are roughly 36 unhoused individuals in West Nipissing.

In their request to council they have noted that the organization is now officially incorporated as a non-profit organization. The group also informed council that they will soon be occupying an office in Sturgeon Falls to better serve the community. The cost of rent will $10,848 per year.

For the last few years council has approved funding to cover the annual rent of the West Nipissing Food Bank. In December council approved the 2024 expense of $8,557 for this group setting a likely fair comparable for this equally meaningful organization.

Financial transparency

Councillor Anne Tessier has added a item to this week’s agenda that deals with financial transparency. In her memo to council, Tessier points out that the previous council passed a by law requiring staff to provide councillors with monthly disbursements sheets (a summary of municipal expenses).

Tessier notes that this has not been happening for the 2022-2026 council.

In the Tuesday agenda package, the town’s Director of Corporate Services addresses this concern in a lengthy memo. She confirms that these reports were discontinued in late 2021 because they were “labour intensive” and because software issues made them more difficult to produce.

She does not indicate that council has ever agreed to amend the bylaw making these monthly reports optional. In her apparent defence for not seeing the need for monthly reports, the director states:

“There are detailed procedures in place regarding purchase orders, signing authorities, payment release, review of payments, and review of general ledgers. These procedures are subject to internal audit. Additionally, these procedures are audited by our third-party auditors on an annual basis. Any recommendations from the external audit team are incorporated into our practices and form the basis for future testing and audits.”

We will see if council is comfortable with this deviation from the financial transparency bylaw or if they will require monthly reports to be shared with councillors.

This week’s council meeting can be watched live on Youtube beginning at 6:30PM on Tuesday. The full agenda package can be found here.

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