Council eliminates deficit
Posted by Wendy King on 03/28/2010
By Chris Fell -
MEAFORD – The Municipality of Meaford will eliminate its accumulated $2.9 million deficit in 2010 instead of spending the next five-years retiring that amount.
That extraordinary news was presented to a sparse gathering of the local citizens at a special budget public meeting at Meaford Hall on Monday evening (March 22).
Director of Corporate Services/Treasurer David Kennedy unveiled a brand new deficit plan during his presentation of the 2010 budget. Due to a bizarre sequence of events that council can’t fully reveal due to litigation threats, the Municipality of Meaford will now eliminate its combined deficit in one year. The municipality will borrow $1.135 million from its reserves, spend $1 million of its working capital reserve, sell $400,000 of municipal property and use its $400,000 rate stabilization reserve amount to pay back the entire deficit in one year.
Since the deficit reduction revenues are coming from funds the municipality already has (reserves) and land sales the new strategy will not affect the numbers in the 2010 operating budget. In addition, the five-year financial plan remains in place. The deficit reduction amount contained in the five-year plan will now be dedicated to repaying the borrowed reserve funds and rebuilding the working capital reserve.
The new deficit strategy became necessary after the Municipality of Meaford was threatened with legal action last week by unnamed ratepayers upset that the deficit was being dealt with over a period of years instead of immediately as required by the Municipal Act.
The litigation threats resulted in council holding a special in-camera budget meeting last Wednesday afternoon to discuss the situation. Officials at the Ministry of Municipal Affairs were also contacted by the same ratepayers. The Ministry subsequently asked the Municipality of Meaford to deal with the deficit immediately. At Monday’s budget meeting Mayor Francis Richardson said council could not reveal who was making the complaints to the Ministry and threatening the municipality with litigation because they are identifiable individuals…
www.simcoe.com
Posted by
Wendy King
on 03/28/2010. Filed under
Meaford.
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