(file photo/northeastNOW Staff)

By Mat Barrett

2019 Surpluses

City of Melfort allocates 2019 surpluses

Sep 15, 2020 | 10:21 AM

Melfort council approved the allocation of the city’s 2019 surplus funds at its meeting last night.

Mayor Rick Lang told northeastNOW that most of the time, the surplus allocation is essentially predetermined through a policy, but there is a bit of flexibility if need be and it did show a bit in the 2019 surplus.

A total of $526,649 — the largest amount — was earmarked for the Waste Disposal Site Reserve. Of that amount, $358,424 comes from the landfill surplus which would normally go to that reserve as it is, but the other $168,225 of surplus comes from the waste collection operating surplus. Normally, those funds would go into the Waste Collection Site Reserve. Lang said they do have a reason to send more money to the Waste Disposal Site Reserve.

“There’s going to be a day when we have to build a new cell at the landfill and possibly decommission the old cell,” he said.

Lang said they want to prepare for the cost of that project. He said they have attempted to apply for funding for that project when it becomes a need, but have not received any funding as of yet.

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There was also $106,557 that came from the utility operating surplus in 2019. That money is earmarked for the Water Rate Stabilization Fund that was in a $156,726 deficit. The reason for the deficit in that fund was due to a bad year for water main breaks in 2018 where Lang said there were upwards of 50 in the city. While the 2019 surplus doesn’t cover the whole deficit, Lang said it gets them closer to paying off that debt.

“This year’s, 2019 surplus certainly helped with that,” he said. “And we’re hopeful that this year, in 2020 we’ll develop a surplus that will cover off the rest of that.”

Water line replacement has been a topic for a number of years in Melfort, and Lang said they realize the need to do lots of them in the very near future. He said with their contract with SaskWater expiring in four or five years, there’s a timeline for getting that done before rates rise from SaskWater.

“We realize that it’s an issue that we have to deal with,” Lang told northeastNOW. “We’ve been applying for federal-provincial grants to help us out with that, but we’ve had 11 years of not succeeding so far. So, we’ll keep applying, but I think the other conclusion that we’ve come to is that we have to start dealing with some of this infrastructure through our own means, and at the same time, adjust the applications that we’re sending to the federal, provincial governments to reflect what we are doing, and what still needs to be done.”

The remaining surplus from 2019 came from the general operating surplus to the amount of $24,918. Half of that will go to the Special Capital Reserve, and the other half will go to the Facility Maintenance Reserve. The Special Capital Reserve is to be used for capital projects in the city, some of which have included the Melfort Heliport, Spruce Haven Recreation Park development, and land acquisitions for the City of Melfort.

Lang said the operating surplus was very close to being as low as it should be, but said administrators budgeted accordingly. He added the rest of the surpluses were expected.

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mat.barrett@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @matbarrett6