It was an eventful first night for Chatham-Kent’s budget deliberations.
Wednesday night during an online meeting, council passed a number of motions to whittle down the draft 2022 budget, by reducing infrastructure line items, cutting a total of $2.3 million.
The proposed budget hike was at 4.74 per cent at the beginning of the night, and with council’s decisions, it now sits at 3.37 per cent.
Chatham-Kent’s CFO Gord Quinton cautioned council not to push infrastructure spending down the road to future years, yet council decided to make compromises with infrastructure spending.
Council cut $675,000 from asset management in lieu of divestments. Council also decided to reduce money slated for Lake Erie shoreline issues by $650,000, by approving the reduction by a narrow 10-8 vote.
In another close vote (10-8), council also reduced the amount allocated for infrastructure lifecycle inflation, basing it on an inflation at 3.3 per cent instead of at four percent, which provided a savings of $442,000.
Thomas Kelly, Chatham-Kent’s general manager of infrastructure and engineering, said when cuts are made to infrastructure it can lead to future problems.
“Every time we shortchange and shortcut the infrastructure and make those cuts it means that all of our assets are going to be to a mediocre standard [because] we will not be investing like we should and we’re going to see a gradual decline in the quality of our assets,” he said.
Night two of budget deliberations are taking place Thursday night and will be available for viewing on YouTube and Chatham’s YourTV.
