Today, Council directed administration to bring forward 24 budget change concepts for consideration as part of the Budget 2025 process.
The budget change concepts are the result of a service level review and prioritization process Council and administration undertook as one of several process changes for Budget 2025. Over the summer, City Council reviewed The City’s 275 service levels and identified 37 they were interested in pursuing for possible change. Today, administration presented a report outlining the risks, impacts and opportunities of each item, and Council provided direction on which items to move forward to the operating budget debate in November. Of the 37 items, Council passed 19 resolutions and brought forward an additional five resolutions.
“The decisions made by Council today will inform what comes forward for consideration during Budget debate in November,” said Mayor Ken Johnston. “The rigour both Council and administration applied to this service level process will help ensure a budget that considers and balances the needs of our community and the fiscal realities we currently face. I am confident today’s process will serve us well as we move closer to the budget debate.”
A full list of the Council resolutions is available here: Council resolutions from September 3 and 4 meeting (pdf)
This work is necessary as we look at new ways and opportunities to balance the budget. We estimate $20 million is needed to balance the budget in 2025. While some of this can be achieved through property tax and utility user fees, we need to consider additional ways to reduce expenses to balance the budget.
“Today was an important step in our budget process,” said City Manager Tara Lodewyk. “Administration now has clear direction on the specific service level changes Council would like to see reflected in the operating budget submission in November. We look forward to refining these budget change concepts further, including engaging with our community and employees, as we look to the big picture of building our budget. These budget change concepts are just one component of the budget and we still have many factors to consider, including our capital and utilities budget, other expenditures, revenue and property taxes.”
The City will now engage with the community to seek feedback on the budget change concepts that have been identified to go forward to Budget 2025. We will provide a What we Heard report to City Council to help guide their conversations and decisions during budget debate in November. The What we Heard Report from the budget engagement completed in the Spring is available here.
For more information about Budget 2025, please visit reddeer.ca/budget2025.