A surplus in the Town’s budget from last year will be set aside for social programming and future expenditures.
The 2016 surplus came in at $114,000 after Okotoks council reviewed its year-end numbers on March 27. The surplus was originally projected to be more than $800,000 in December.
Rolland Russell, Okotoks finance and operating systems manager, said the lower surplus came down to three factors.
“So we had a slight increase in personnel costs, a reduction in revenue from water and sewer, and we had some costs we had not anticipated related to operations and maintenance expenses,” said Russell.
Council voted to place $70,000 from the surplus in reserve for Family and Community Support Services (FCSS), he said. The funds will be held to help pay for FCSS services, and could also provide a buffer in case the Province requests a repayment of money given to the Town for a program that was not delivered in 2016, said Russell.
“In 2016, they were planning a program around support for youth, and they were trying to hire someone to run that program, but they weren’t able to secure the appropriate contract,” said Russell. “Our concern is that the government is going to ask for the money back because we didn’t put the program on.”
He said the Town will ask the Province to carry the funding amount forward for the youth program to run in 2017.
Council voted to put the remaining $48,000 into the Town’s accumulated surplus, he said.
“It basically goes into the savings account,” said Russell. “It could be used at some future time to fund something, but if it goes into an accumulated surplus then there’s no specific plan for it.”
Coun. Ken Heemeryck, chairperson of the finance and budget committee, said he was pleased with how 2016 closed out.
“It’s nice to be pretty close to what you budgeted,” said Heemeryck. “There’s variances, but if you’ve got a few million dollar surplus, you’ve probably taxed too much and haven’t done too well. You can’t argue too much when you’re just out to the good by $100,000 or so.”
