The city's finance committee during a meeting on November 20th, 2019. (Danielle McCreadie)
As the city looks to cut services, common council is putting its own budget under the knife.
Options to reduce both council and the office of the Mayor’s budgets by anywhere from 10 to 25 per cent were explored during Wednesday night’s finance meeting.
Councillor Gary Sullivan says during a time of across-the-board cuts, cutting their internal budget is only fair.
“In the overall austerity conversation that we’re having, I think its important that our council budgets are also examined. If we’re examining everything and deciding what sin the (sustainability) hopper and out of the hopper, I think it’s important for us to lead by example,” he said.
Councillor Donna Reardon says there are a lot of things in council’s budget they don’t need.
“We have had a raise, and so looking at this, if it were me, I would take the whole $13,000 worth of meals right out. We don’t need them, and so I would get rid of that right off the top,” she said.
Options include reducing the budget lines for meals, translation services, and purchasing tickets to events.
Councillor Greg Norton says the entire ticket purchase budget of $19,000 could be cut out.
But City Manager John Collin doesn’t think that’s a good idea.
“A lot of times the ticket purchases are charitable donations to groups, so it’s not as much representational as it is charitable donations,” he said.
Norton says a solution could be having councillors purchase their own tickets, especially since they got a pay raise this year.
City staff will explore the budget reductions as part of its sustainability initiatives.
