While it’s great that the town’s finance committee and its chair councillor Chris Zanetti plan on being first out of the gate when it comes to delivering this municipality’s budget, the timelines being proposed are a little disconcerting.

Zanetti is hoping to present a final budget sometime next March rather than the customary end of April. That means the municipality’s new budget officer, expected to replace former director of corporate services Libby Boucher, will have even less time to figure out the municipality’s financial position and work with staff and council to draft the Town of Huntsville’s 2008 budget.

According to Zanetti, the hiring committee, which he is part of, will “likely” recommend a candidate to council at their next meeting Nov. 5. That tells us whoever is hired will either have to be extremely familiar with the municipality’s operations or seriously hit the ledgers and not resurface until (we hope) they are comfortable with the inner machinations of the municipality. He or she will need to be a quick study in order to make sound recommendations.   

Also worrisome is the fact that Zanetti and his committee are suggesting that 2008 spending priorities ought to be set out through a community plan, which they haven’t even begun formulating. That plan, says Zanetti, will also identify spending priorities for the remainder of council’s four-year mandate. What’s even more incredible is that the committee is hoping to have such a plan completed by Christmas or early January.

Really? Doesn’t a community plan require public consultation?

Also of concern is the fact that department heads are being asked to hold the line at a 1.7 per cent spending increase in keeping with inflation, yet the cost of department salaries and benefits are not being factored into that mix. That is worrisome because human resources are the municipality’s highest cost on the operations side of the equation. Council approved a new pay grid last year, and while Zanetti has indicated that attaining salary increases will be based on performance reviews and productivity audits, planning a budget on the premise that some employees will fail to get salary increases is not sound planning. It means that poor performance in some ways might be beneficial to the municipality’s bottom line, which in itself is a contradiction.

There is no doubt that these are interesting times at town hall.

T.d.V