Chopped, slashed, and cut.
As much as that might be the language of your hairdresser, those were the watch words when it came to over five hours of budget deliberations in what would be the first of several meetings intent upon bringing forward a new budget for 2025 in Renfrew.
If there was any fluff, either real or imagined, in previous municipal budgets, then Council had a machete stroke to apply to it. There will be no fluff left unattended by the look of it.
Councillors Kyle Cybulski, John McDonald, and Andrew Dick sported the sharpest knives during the opening session, at times making Elon Musk look like just some guy with a chainsaw. The three councillors were the most heard-from when it came to a line by line presentation by Renfrew Treasurer Charlene Jackson.
In fact, it was Councillor Cybulski who showed up with a document representing twenty-some hours of homework whereby the councillor determined that axing any number of expense items was the way to move forward, because, as he said, “it all adds up.”
Addition by subtraction.
Cutting any expense that couldn’t pass muster, appeared to be overly generous, or just plain not needed (an opinion) was what the three had in mind as the treasurer went through the books of municipal expenses. The idea, of course, is to improve the bottom line moving forward, especially in a municipality where money going out has significantly out-paced money coming in.
The simple equation of x – y = z was the name of the game, x being the expense as budgeted in previous years, y being the amount cut from that expense, and z being what’s left after making the change. Another favoured equation was x/2 = y, where the existing expense was simply chopped in half.
It’s going to make for some lean times at Renfrew Town Hall, where everything from pencil sharpeners and paper clips to postage stamps will be found in fewer numbers moving forward.
Staff training and professional development were other areas where a significant budget haircut was performed.
Advertising and professional consulting services were also targeted, as there were a number of items relating to these that had previously budgeted amounts not used, where the actual amount spent didn’t reach the budgeted threshold. In almost every case of this, the difference between budget and actual was chopped, with the actual expense from, say 2024, became the new proposed budget number for 2025. In some cases, the cuts weren’t merely the difference between the two, but actually bit into the previous actual amount, meaning that Council didn’t just want to save the difference, but also wanted to dig into the amount spent previously, making fewer dollars available for those items.
It’s important to note that this is all part of a process.
This meeting, the first of two, was intended to be the first part of the budget process, and was therefore intent on getting closer to a “draft” budget, or at least the first draft of a new budget. So, as part of this, councillors had the opportunity to identify areas where they’d like to see modifications made, almost exclusively cuts. That’s something one should expect when they see a group of people grappling with a difficult situation that predated their arrival on Council.
So it’s not a case of a bunch of reckless, far-right Libertarians attacking spending on principle, as in they have a slash and burn ideology to satisfy. It’s more a group of people who have inherited a lot of the responsibility for a municipality that’s had its debt explode over the past decade.
So it’s a tough meeting for Council and a tough meeting for the Treasurer, mostly for the Treasurer, as she has to take these revisions and determine their efficacy across all departments in the corporation. Five hours on a YouTube livestream is one thing, but I was a spectator essentially, and not one of the participants who had to sit the meeting in-person and make difficult decisions along the way.
These cuts, then, are. “draft” cuts, in that they’ll go to the departments for determination as to whether they’re “do-able.” If a department head determines that the level of cut goes too far, then they’re given the opportunity to address that expense and offer a justification for the funding level to remain intact, or even be enhanced. In this environment, though, there’s not going to be a lot of budgetary enhancement.
In the period from April 23 to May 13, there will be a second draft of the budget brought before Council, the meeting date(s) to be determined. Once finalized, the process will culminate the final passing of the budget, scheduled for May 13, 2025.
That first five-hour plus session on April 1 had to be augmented by a second meeting this past Friday, April 3, 2025. These two sessions will result in a document to be known as the first draft of the budget, with items contained within subject to debate and modification leading to the release of a second draft budget. From there we get everything hammered out with the intent of releasing a final budget.
No matter the level of cuts to both financials and services, and no matter the vast reservoir of good intentions by those tasked with the job, the final result will be what determines the levy, or tax rate for the upcoming year. And despite the very best of intentions from all concerned, it won’t be a happy result, because it can’t be a happy result.
There will be no joy in Mudville as a result of any of this.
This budget will be a pain management budget, with some structural relief for the journey ahead, but nevertheless an acceptance that there’s some difficulty here, a difficulty not within reach of casual fixes, but one requiring extensive surgery. And surgery is invasive and uncomfortable, and healing can be a process, and it can be a long time before there’s any regaining of the previous quality of life.
It can be like that when your municipality is thrust into the role of a patient.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 