1996 County Budget - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Corporation of the County of Essex Chief Administrative Officer Memo TO: FROI~ SUBJECT: Warden Schmidt and Members of County Council John Curran Chief Administrative Officer 1996 Budget Estimates I I I I I I I It seems that every year the challenge to bring in the annual estimates at an acceptable level is becoming more and more difficult. It would be easy to become caught up in the rhetoric put forward by senior levels of government which indicate that austerity is somehow new or different. While that may be true at other levels of government it is certainly not so at the municipal level. Doing more with less has become more than a cliche. Unfortunately the next level of response will begin to address doing "less with less". The Provincial' reductions in transfer payments for Roads and Unconditional Grants, now referred to as Municipal Support Grants and which begin in 1996 have caused a reduction in roads expenditures and administrative costs corporate wide. Coupled with reduced Social Services costs due to overall benefit reductions, we can meet the 1996 challenge. However, 1996 needs to be considered a planning and implementation year to address additional funding decreases expected for 1997. While. we are able to meet the 1996 challenge, mainly through expenditure reductions accompanied by cautiously optimistic projections in earned interest and other somewhat speculative line items, the fact is that 1997 will be much more traumatic. Already we have administratively begun to consider some sigrdF~ant restructuring utilizing the full advantages of computerization to create redundancies. We also intend to streamline internal processes and service delivery to eliminate any unnecessary cost. 360 Fairview Avenue West, Essex Ontario N8M 1Y6 - Phone: (519) 776-6441 Fax: (519) 776-4455