Council Clips – April 21, 2020
This is a summary of three meetings held today: Finance Committee, Special Council, and Committee of the Whole.
Pandemic Financial Response
The Finance Committee directed administration to prepare amendments to the 2020 operating budgets based on the assumption that municipal operations will be affected by Covid-19 until at least the end of July. The amendments will be brought back to Council as soon as possible, and must achieve these outcomes:
- Maintain essential services and business continuity
- Provide departmental expenditure reductions to help mitigate losses in revenue
- Allow for scalability of operations post-pandemic
- Provide increased social and economic development supports for those individuals and businesses most impacted by the pandemic, and
- Provide options to reduce the municipal 2020 tax requirement to the same level as 2019.
Visit COVID-19 Information for a ongoing list of actions taken by the Town of Canmore in response to COVID-19.
2019 Financial Statements
Currently, the Town is in a very healthy financial position. The Finance Committee reviewed and accepted the Town’s 2019 audited financial statements and allocated the operating surplus of $1.7M to the Tax Stabilization Reserve. Most of this operating surplus is as a result of receiving higher than budgeted non-tax revenues such as fines and planning and development fees, in addition to savings in general operating expenses, payroll, contracted services, and professional fees. You can see the statements, as well as statements from previous years, at bottom of this webpage Budget & Financial Information.
2020 Downtown Business Improvement Area (BIA)
Council agreed with the BIA Board’s request to keep their 2020 levy at 2019 rates.
Biosphere Institute Solar Project
The Biosphere Institute has completed a study assessing the feasibility of generating renewable energy in the Bow Valley and created a steering committee to guide the creation of a renewable energy cooperative. To learn more visit the report on the Biosphere Institute page
2019 RCMP, Bylaw Services, and Fire-Rescue Statistics
These reports are presented to Council annually. If you are interested in the 2019 reports, they are published on Bylaw Services and Fire-Rescue
Also check out the agenda package for regular features such as Council Updates and Service Area Reports.
