City Council begins budget deliberations
By Dan Jensen

Should the City of Camrose hire more police officers? Do we need to improve our parks areas? Are the citizens getting enough services for their tax dollars? Is it time to start looking at replacing facilities? Those are just a few of the many questions Camrose city council has started to address in deliberations leading to the passage of the 2009 municipal budget.

"It's going to be a difficult process again this year," said Camrose mayor Clarence Mastel.

"We're really going to have to take into consideration and review the must haves versus what would be nice to have."

The process of setting a budget can be a bit of a guessing game that has to take in a number of variables, not the least of which are the prices of fuel and electricity. The cost of a litre of gasoline or diesel fuel is now half of what it was a few months ago, but will those prices stay low or will they go up again?

"There is a lot of stuff that is not within our control," said Mastel.

It's not simply a case of council saying that departments have to keep their proposed budgets in line with the rate of inflation. That might work well for one department, but it could, depending on the circumstances, have a different impact on another.

"There are departments that can operate on less and there are departments where the increase may be justified," said Mastel. "Take, for example, the Edgeworth Centre. We knew when we built the facility that there were going to be higher costs associated with the continued operation of it."

In a way, Camrose with its $62 million budget is no different than the municipality or government with a $6 billion budget. The focus for everyone in these tight economic times is one of reining in costs and maintaining core services, at least until the economy starts to improve.

"We have a lot of tough decisions to make, but fortunately our administration and staff have spent a lot of time and effort in putting together presentations that will project into a preliminary draft proposal," said Mastel.

Council will continue to meet with the departments until the middle of December, at which time it intends to adopt a motion to move forward. All the budget meetings are open to the general public.