Norfolk staff will create a report for the public detailing the history how the county got into its current financial bind despite objections from a councilor who said he didn’t want to play the “blame game.”
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Mayor Amy Martin got support at a council meeting on Wednesday for her motion directing staff to prepare a report on the county’s historical financials.
The report will have a high-level summary that includes: the status of reserves over time; annual tax increases; annual debt levels; annual operating and capital budgets; annual operating and capital expenditures; annual contributions to reserves; the county’s investments; investments spent within the community and their impact; analysis of spending habits, including any notable trends or shifts; policy improvements made in response to financial challenges; and the county’s current financial position, including debt levels, revenue sources and expenditures.
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“I have repeatedly been having conversations with community members who don’t understand what happened, how we got here,” said Martin. “We owe it to the public to be transparent. We can’t continue to hang our hat on not building new recreation, skating by with the roadwork we can do, not adding new amenities the public wants us to do, not being able to pay our staff because of our financial situation and not having some type of information that paints a picture as to why.”
When Norfolk approved its 2024 operating budget, the county had $85 million in outstanding debt, depleted reserves, aging assets, including roads, drinking water, wastewater and stormwater systems, and a multi-million-dollar funding shortfall to manage them. For the first time in its history, the county’s capital plan was projected to top the $1-billion mark.
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Norfolk homeowners have been hit year after year with increasing tax bills.
But Coun. Chris VanPaasen called creation of the report “a waste of time.”
“Anybody can look up the budgets,” he said. “They have all the information. I don’t’ want this to look like some sort of blame game of ‘we have to do this now because previous councils didn’t do this or could have done this or should have done this.’ It almost looks like we’re trying to find an excuse to blame it on somebody else.”
VanPaassen said he tells residents he’s not looking for answers about what happened in the past, but to fix the situation.
“We’re turning the finances around,” he said. “It hasn’t been pretty. It hasn’t been fun. We’ve increased the taxes every year I’ve been here. I’m going to live with that because that’s what needed to be done.”
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Martin said the intention of the report isn’t to “find excuses or blame formerly terms of council.”
Coun. Adam Veri supported creating a financial report but said it will generate questions from the public and questioned how long it would take staff to respond to them.
Heidi VanDyk, general manager of corporate services, said attempts would be made to provide responses as fast as possible but more complex questions would require more time.
“I think this will go a long way to informing council of the long-term trends and some of the items we may need to focus more on,” said Coun. Tom Masschaele. “And it will be very informative and educational for the public to get a better picture of the finances of where we’ve been and where we are today.”
The report will include data going back to 2015 and will be completed sometime in the second quarter of 2025. Coun. Alan Duthie suggested information from the report also be turned into a digital video.
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