It’s hard to tell today what a $2.3 million cut to the budget will look like next year but projects are already falling off the table.
Plans to redesign Lakeside Park have been deferred, in addition to the deferral of the $1.2 million plans to repair and enhance Mountain Square.
As the budget is developed more fully under the new guidelines in the months to come, staff will be forced to drop and defer capital projects.
Only time will tell if council has made the right choice in cutting its capital spending by $2.3 million, said Mayor Ken Melamed.
“It’s possible that looking back we may regret that we didn’t have a higher tax increase,” he said this week. “But we’ve had to find a compromise between the acceptability of a tax increase and budget cuts that are tenable and manageable.”
Defending its spending of late, council also pointed to past decisions which highlight its fiscal responsibility — not building the $60 million sledge hockey arena, downsizing the municipal renovations from $15 million to $1.5 million and pushing off plans for the museum to a later date.
