Rocky View County (RVC) will be facing intense budget pressures driven by high inflation when the draft 2023 budget is brought before council in mid or late November.
RVC executive director of corporate services, Kent Robinson, told the Rocky View Weekly the County is facing budgetary pressures unlike any the municipality has experienced in recent years.
“It’s not just the County that is facing them, I think all of us individually are facing it too,” he said. “Inflation is one of the biggest ones that is affecting us (as a municipality). You can imagine the amount of fuel we use on an annual basis, and we have seen what has happened to fuel prices. Those are the types of things that are posing a challenge for us.”
Robinson said this inflationary pressure and uncertainty will mean council will likely have to make some tough decisions on spending and taxation in this year’s budget discussions.
“You want to maintain the same level of service, and your input costs have gone up considerably – that’s a challenge,” Robinson said.
And not only will previous estimates on the 2023 budget put in place four years ago have to be adjusted given the massive spike in inflation this year, but that inflationary pressure also clouds the next four years of budget projections with a great deal more uncertainty than usual.
“We budget years in advance, and so we had a 2023 budget already in place,” Robinson explained. “But we didn’t anticipate inflation being where it’s at. Right now we are focused on 2023. We’ll get that in front of council first. But all of our managers have been contemplating those future years as well.”
And, Robinson conceded, the County’s financial crystal ball is exceedingly cloudy at the moment.
“If you look back in time, we have had a pretty stable (period) where interest rates were low and inflation where we could predict what things were going to happen,” he said. “It’s a bit more difficult right now.”
Municipalities only have so many levers to pull when it comes to budgets, and the decisions council makes in coming weeks could have repercussions on taxation, spending, or both.
That’s why it is important for residents to have their say, said Robinson, and they can do so this budget season by going online to give feedback on what they want to see in the 2023 budget by engaging in the County’s budget allocator exercise.
Public feedback of this sort helps council identify priorities for citizens when it comes to making potential cuts or authorizing tax increases.
“We actually created a citizen satisfaction survey back in April,” Robinson said. “We had another campaign where we invited feedback on the budget back in June. And now, with this latest tool we have put up on our website, all of that will be put together and presented to council for their consideration when they are considering the budget.
“I think it all provides data to council, and to ourselves (as staff) as to what folks are feeling,” he added. “Are we doing certain services properly? Those are the types of things we want to garner from this exercise.”
To have your say on the 2023 draft budget for Rocky View County visit rockyview.ca.
