City Council is slowly chipping away at the 2007 Operating Budget but so far all of the positive changes have been made by outside sources.

 

A little movement but still a long way to go.

Moose Jaw City Council has inched along when it comes to the 2007 Operating Budget. After starting the week with a 2.72 per cent mill rate increase they dropped to 2.62 thanks to a smaller Hillcrest Curling Budget.

But Finance Director Brian Acker says there's still work to do if there is to be no tax increase this year. "There's a number of items but council has dealt with most of the referred items, the one left would be the Police Service that still needs to be dealt with and then the delegations that have come before council."

One of those delegations was the Festival of Words who requested an extra 2500 dollars this year to help replace one of their volunteer director positions with a full time paid position. Council granted that request boosting their funding from $6000 to $8500 this year.

While the budget that affects our taxes for the next year continues to shrink it has been by no real work of city council. The first shrink came from extra funds from the provincial government through revenue sharing with the latest change coming from a smaller budget submitted by the Hillcrest Curling Management Board.