At a special City of Powell River finance committee meeting, city council members considered and prioritized a list of 11 recommendations from the community finance advisory committee.
At the November 3 meeting, councillors reviewed findings of the community finance advisory committee, which was formed by the city to include residents who would delve into all aspects of the city’s finances and come up with recommendations to improve its financial health. As well as the residents, mayor Dave Formosa served on the committee as its chair, and councillor George Doubt, the city’s finance committee chair, served as vice-chair.
Doubt said the reason for calling the meeting is because the advisory committee served the community for a little more than a year and came up with recommendations that came to the finance committee in August.
“They were received and supported by council,” said Doubt. “This is a session that gives us an opportunity to prioritize and talk about the various efforts we would like to put into place so we are not just putting that report on the shelf and leaving it.
“We would have a discussion among ourselves and the public, if anyone chose to attend, about the priorities this council has for addressing these recommendations, and letting staff know what we think are the more important ones to be addressed sooner.”
Chief financial officer Adam Langenmaier said the advisory committee had a chance to look at what is going on with the city, and how to make recommendations and improvements. Langenmaier provided a priority matrix that summarizes, visualizes and identifies the priority to be assigned to the recommendations and to provide a timeline.
“Some items we want done right away and some are priorities that will take many years to achieve,” said Langenmaier.
Langenmaier said a lot of the discussion about the advisory committee was: what was the financial impact?
“At this time, we don’t have much of a financial impact,” said Langenmaier. “It is the finance committee and council that does that work. Here is the opportunity for the finance committee to give direction to staff through prioritizing what we want to do.”
Bankruptcy statement addressed
Councillor Maggie Hathaway said she was looking forward to the process of prioritizing. She said prior to getting started, however, she had a question to ask. She said she had seen on Facebook several times a statement by Pat Martin saying the city is very close to bankruptcy.
“In light of that, I would like to know if that’s anywhere near the truth or not, because if it is, then I am going to be looking at what we are doing in a totally different light,” said Hathaway. “If I could just get it confirmed whether or not we’re near bankruptcy, I will know how to shed light on this report.”
Mayor Dave Formosa said the finance committee had recently received a report on long-term debt from manager of accounting services Mallory Denniston, outlining the financial health of the community.
“She talked about the amount of ability we still have to borrow money,” said Formosa. “We were far from anywhere near bankruptcy. The amount of leeway the city still has to borrow, even given the fact we’re doing this massive, largest ever in our history, wastewater project, I think answers that question loud and clear.”
Formosa said with regard to Martin, he did not know what authority or credentials she has to make such a comment.
“Our licensed professional auditors would have to put that in our audit that we are close to bankruptcy,” said Formosa. “That is nothing near the case. That’s so unfortunate that people say stuff like this.”
Doubt said he did not think the city was anywhere near close to bankruptcy.
“We have a five-year plan that talks about paying everything we want to pay and what we can do to provide services,” said Doubt.
Langenmaier said if the city was in financial distress, council would be the first group to know, to get direction on how to solve the problem.
“We are not in that situation,” said Langenmaier.
The finance committee then went through the 11 recommendations from the advisory committee. The first was on permissive tax exemptions, which council has already started working on capping the 2022 exemptions at $400,000, meaning organizations that applied will have to pay 4.9 per cent of their taxes in the coming year. The committee considered this a high priority item that should be dealt with in the short term.
Recommendation breakdown
There were two recommendations in parks, recreation and culture. The first deficiency was a lack of information provided to the public regarding what services the department provides.
The second was the city is funding the majority of recreation services costs in the city, which puts a larger cost burden on city residents, while rural residents have access to recreation but do not contribute to the services at the same level. These were mid-term priorities.
Harbours was another category, recommending that city residents have preferential access or rates to the harbour that they are supporting. This is a medium priority, short-term process for the committee.
There were two recommendations for city reserve funds. The first was that council is not receiving up-to-date information on reserves, and the second was city reserve balances and goals are not clearly defined. The first is a medium-term, low priority process, with the second being a long-term, medium priority process.
Regarding properties, the advisory committee stated there is a limited supply of developable residential land within the city. This will be a medium-term, high priority initiative for the city, the finance committee recommended.
There were also four recommendations on modernization, including acceptance of online payments or credit cards, plus the need for providing the best customer service.
The recommendations will be sent to city council for consideration.
