Collingwood staff told: keep cutting

By Morgan Ian Adams Collingwood Enterprise Bulletin March 4 2011

COLLINGWOOD — They’ve found more than $1.5 million, but councillors want to go even deeper.

On Thursday morning, councillors were presented with further budget savings of $1.5 million. The savings including cutting the daytime hours for the town’s accessible shuttle service, hiking public transit rates, ending the contract with the company that runs the municipally-owned railline, and chopping several small capital projects.

It’s also being suggested the town sell the building that houses the Georgian Triangle Tourist Association.

However, at the suggestion of Councillor Keith Hull — and unanimously supported by council — municipal staff have been directed to find a way to bring spending in line with 2010, so, as CAO Kim Wingrove noted, “The bill in the mail is not that much different than the bill in the mail from last year.”

“I want (staff) to come back with a zero to give us the opportunity to look at the whole picture,”?said Hull. “There should be a clear message to the department heads, not just for this year but all four (of the term)… that we haven’t seen the difficult questions of how we will see deep reductions.”

However, he also cautioned, “We don’t want to convey that we’re looking at hacking and slashing.”

Many of the councillors echoed his remarks.

“The message we got (during the election campaign) was there needs to be cuts, and the people understand there will be service cuts,”?said Councillor Ian Chadwick. “Where those cuts are is hard to say, but the people want us to hold the line… for a first budget, we need to be as parsimonious as we can.”

Wingrove told councillors that what they’d be after is “permanent changes to how we do business.

“We hope to get this budget accepted for this year, but that what comes aftere is a more thorough discussion about changes to departments,” she said. “What we’ve done to date is significant, and to make (further) significant changes in any department, the likely result is the impact will be felt by the citizens.

The savings presented Thursday morning would bring the average property tax increase to 1.6%. The discussions about public transit took up a good portion of the debate, as councillors wrestled with the topic of increasing the fare from $1 to either $1.50 or $2, and eventually leaving it in the hands of staff to come back with a report.

That report would also consider the financial effect of allowing advertising in the buses.

Hull suggested the price of a monthly bus pass remain the same, while the cost of an individual ride increase. He noted the example of Blue Mountain Resort’s implementation of the 5×7 pass that resulted in significant revenue growth for the resort.

Chadwick said he supported an increase — “as much as I’d like to keep it as low as possible” — but cautioned against a big jump in fares lest the town winds up with a “downward spike”?in ridership.

Council did back reducing the hours of the accessible shuttle to only operate from 6 p.m. until midnight, noting the Red Cross shuttle is available during the day.

That move saves about $30,000.

Ending the contract for rail service will save the town about $125,000 this year. Wingrove said a meeting will be held with City of Barrie officials — which co-owns the line with Collingwood — the contractor and rail users to take a final look at the service.

“We need to find a lot more than $1,000 here or a $1,000 there,” noted Deputy-mayor Rick Lloyd, who has been chairing the budget meetings. “We need to give staff the opportunity to come back and see how to do it.”

A public meeting on the budget will be held tomorrow morning (Saturday) in the council chambers at town hall, starting at 9 a.m.