With reluctance, but no motion to stop it either, city council is directing administration to find ways to cut a whopping 8% from this year's operating budget. The motion came a week ago but in receiving a report from City Manager Jim Puffalt on Monday, many councillors seemed to regret their decision to support the idea.

It could have been because Puffalt explained just what the motion could mean.

"The amount of money that's being asked to be taken out of the 2019 budget that is presented is massive," said Puffalt. "In the operating fund, that's just over $5 million that's being asked to be reduced."

Councillor Brian Swanson made the motion last week and says this spend, spend, spend mentality needs to stop and City Hall needs to find a way to stay within their means.

"Last year the motion was for a 5 per cent reduction and didn't pass so I was a bit surprised when this one passed with 8% but ignore it and next year will have to be 10 per cent. We are not funding the things that we need to be funding appropriately," argued Swanson.

"I make no apologies for saying that we have to redirect our funding towards core infrastructure needs of the city."

But with no motion to call off the potential cuts, city administration will take the next month to review their reports and come up with options to present to council in the new year.

Not appearing to fall onto one side of the other, Councillor Scott McMann said he saw no reason why the report and review should be called off. McMann said in his experience there is great value in having a "worst case scenario" presented, even if you don't act on it.

"I mean, if everything drops out of the bottom there needs to be some decisions made in a hurry and we need to have some idea of what that could be," said McMann. "I don't think they're going to happen this year but I think we need to have some idea of if things really went bad in a hurry, what would our options be."

Council has taken a break for the holidays and will resume budget talks January 7th.