The Village of Pemberton approved its 2011 budget last week with drops in both revenues and expenditures.
The budget, presented to Pemberton council at its March 1 meeting, showed a budget variance of -1.2 per cent in both its earnings and its spending. It expects to take in $6,488,632 in revenue and spend the exact same amount on expenditures like public works, parks, fire services and financial services.
When it comes to taxation, the Village of Pemberton expects to pull in $1,664,298 in 2011. That's $107,882 more than it pulled in tax revenues in 2010, although the Village budgeted to take in $1,607,540, about $51,124 more than actually came to its coffers. Overall the budget reflects a 6.9 per cent increase in expected tax revenues for this year over the last year's projections.
General revenues are expected to be $85,300, up from $79,880 in 2010. That, too, represents a figure that was projected to be higher. The Village hoped to take in $117,589 in general revenue in 2010 but the actual revenues came in under that.
Nikki Gilmore, manager of finance for the Village of Pemberton, said this was because of a "grouping issue."
"Previously water and sewer connection fees were within this category," she said. "Now they are within water and sewer revenues."
Fees for water services are expected to come in at $720,750, an 8.4 per cent increase over 2010 totals of $850,794. That year's fees came in higher than expected. The Village only budgeted for $664,750 in revenues from water services, which also suggests higher water consumption than the local government predicted.
Sewer revenues, meanwhile, are projected at $885,539, a 2.6 per cent decrease over the 2010 totals of $899,386. In this case the Village budgeted to take in $909,539, suggesting lower pressure on sewer services than it projected.
Among expenditures, the biggest budget went to public works and parks. A cost breakdown showed that most of the $1,649,822 would go to salaries totaling $435,823, a significant increase over 2010 salaries of $46,623.
That doesn't, however, mean that people in the public works and parks department suddenly got a massive increase over last year.
Again, this is likely a matter of allocations. The Village of Pemberton has taken on a new accounting method that groups several costs beneath different categories and this is likely the case here - as it is for administration and financial services, whose salaries total $524,054 on the balance sheet. Village Administrator Daniel Sailland has previously clarified with Pique that he's not making that amount of money alone.
Councillor Ted Craddock said at the meeting that he'd like to see costs in the public works and parks department broken down further than they are at present so he can see more clearly how much money is being spent on snow removal.
"When you look at that you can't tell what the cost is," he said, looking at the budget. "I think we need to know, because at this point I think we've blown the whole year's budget. If you don't mind, that's one item I'd like to see broken up because it's such a large budget."
