Both spending and revenue were up at the Village of Pemberton in 2021.
Council received the village’s annual Statement of Financial Information (SOFI) report at its Oct. 18 meeting.
The report highlights that there were 14 employees with a total remuneration of more than $75,000 last year, for a total of $1,409,200—almost half of the Village’s $3-million payroll, and up from 12 employees in 2020.
The top five earners were: outgoing CAO Nikki Gilmore ($149,914); Sheena Fraser, manager of corporate services, ($115,130); Tom Csima, manager of operations, ($111,104); deputy fire chief Cameron Adams ($108,023); and fire chief Robert Grossman ($106,769).
Mayor Mike Richman earned $31,776, up slightly from $29,733 the previous year, while Pemberton’s four councillors each earned $15,718, up from $14,743.
Total wages for the village, meanwhile, added up to $3,075,177.
Expenses for staff in 2021 tallied $29,092.
The report also details that the village paid a total of $11,531,492 to suppliers with payments over $25,000. That’s up from 2020, when that number was $8.2 million, but down significantly from 2019, when it was reported at $17 million.
The top payments went to the Minister of Finance for school taxes ($2,084,944), the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District ($1,644,495), Cedar Crest Lands (BC) Ltd. ($1,552,244), Receiver General for Canada ($893,411), and Sunstone Ridge Developments ($805,477).
Revenue, meanwhile, came in at $11.6 million in 2021, compared to $8.3 million in 2020. Expenses rose to $8.6 million from $7.1 million in that same timeframe. To that end, the accumulated surplus increased to $33,951,749 million from $30,997,616 in 2020.
Elizabeth Tracy, who became the village’s new CAO in June, says from her vantage point, she sees some financial wins last year.
“If I take my 10,000-foot view, what I see is a year where we had some major wins in terms of grants,” she said. “We had some major capital initiatives that were seeded and began—like soccer field two and the Bike Skills Park. These are great new assets to the community—and a testament to the team that made it happen.”
Her goals, looking ahead to next year, are to focus on employee retention and “becoming more service-focused, which I’m always keen to do,” Tracy added.
“[I want to] work with the team to find efficiencies and continue to elevate service to the community,” she said. “A significant one as well: [we’ve] been working on the area of asset management, so fully implementing that plan to help support aging infrastructure and understand what it means when we bring these new assets online.”
In the end, it worked out well to be an incoming employee as council welcomes its newly elected members, Tracy added.
“There’s opportunity in that,” she said. “The organization itself had a lot of change over last year, and so while it’s hard to say goodbye to the folks that actually hired me and had the faith to bring me on board, they were kind enough to help me along with giving me some good feedback going forward.”
SOFI reports are typically presented in June. The Village of Pemberton would not elaborate on why its SOFI report is so late to be presented this year, other than to say the delay was due to “several factors.”
