SYDNEY, N.S. — Cape Breton Regional Municipality Mayor Cecil Clarke wants to know how public services would be affected if the CBRM is forced to trim its annual budget by 10 per cent.
Clarke brought up the matter at a special council meeting at city hall on Thursday when he successfully asked councillors to endorse a motion to direct municipal staff to include an impact analysis of the effects such cuts would have on a department by department basis.
In presenting his request to council, the mayor cited the recently released $220,000 independent study on the future financial viability of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality.
“We know that if we need more money we have to have new revenue streams, an agreement with the province or we raise the tax rates to get more,” said Clarke.
“If we do not have any new arrangements then we’re going to look at the only thing we can do and that is efficiency which means cuts — so, we will go through every element of every departmental budget and ask what a 10 per cent cut means in terms of service delivery and our budgets.”
The mock budget-cutting exercise comes on the heels of the province-funded study, conducted by the accounting firm Grant Thornton, that in its final report suggested the CBRM will continue to struggle financially unless significant strategical, operational and policy-related changes are implemented.
The municipality interprets the report as validation of its claim that its rapidly declining population, hold-steady revenues and aging and costly infrastructure mean it needs financial help from the province.
The Nova Scotia government doesn’t see it that way. Last month, Municipal Affairs Minster Chuck Porter told the Cape Breton Post that the province has no plans to issue the CBRM a blank cheque. However, Porter said his government is committed to working with the municipality to secure desperately needed infrastructure funding.
But CBRM chief financial officer Jennifer Campbell said she expects it will be “really, really tough” to balance the 2020-2021 operating budget because the municipality’s expenses continue to increase.
“The last number of years we have been cutting items such as travel budgets and office supplies in order to be able to balance the budget, but there is only so much of that you can do so the next step would be to evaluate service delivery, to prioritize and determine whether there are any cuts available there,” Campbell said at Thursday’s special council meeting.
The on-paper, cost-cutting exercise that will see CBRM departments cut their budgets by 10 per cent is to be part of the municipality’s annual budgetary consultation process.
The CBRM’s 2019-2020 operating budget is almost $147 million. The largest expenses are engineering and public works ($45 million), the Cape Breton Regional Police Service ($27 million), conditional transfers to the province ($19 million) and fire and emergency services ($18 million).
Meanwhile, an independent auditor’s report on the CBRM’s 2018-2019 budget was also released Thursday. It confirmed the budget’s numbers were in order and that the municipality ended the last fiscal year with a surplus of almost $360,000.
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