There were concerns around the Elliot Lake City Council chamber table Tuesday night that a bare-bones 2022 budget might leave next year's council in a difficult fiscal situation.
Nonetheless, council passed a budget packing a pared-down 3.86 percent operating budget increase.
Principal among concerns during the Tuesday night session was council's failure to make a larger contribution to the municipal reserve funding.
That was closely followed by council's worries that the city may be running behind on facility and program commitments already made, but left incomplete over the years due to lack of funding. Coun. Tom Turner said he was particularly concerned about that.
Inadequate reserve funding by successive councils is something that Treasurer Amy Sonnenburg has cautioned council about for months.
Only Turner and Mayor Dan Marchisella voted against this year's operating budget.
Deliberations on the document started last November. As recently as March, the Ad Hoc Budget Committee was still wrestling with a 6.3 percent increase.
No one on council including committee chair Norman Mann was pleased with the outcome, but seven months into the process, the majority supported this year's compromise document.
It will serve as the template for the 2022 municipal property tax increase. The budget was accepted on a 5-2 vote.
Mayor Marchisella said the summer day camp program, costed at some $92,000 this year, was not scrapped to achieve cost savings, but rather because the city has been unable to attract enough student labour to operate it.
The day camp program is not a daycare offering in the normal sense since it is only offered to children seven years and up.
That said, there has been plenty of public criticism about a lack of job options this year for parents who had counted on day camp to let them work outside their homes during the summer months.
The mayor said, "We do not have enough summer student hiring."
He went on to state the decision to cancel day camp was made due to liability concerns linked to the city's inability to deal with the risk the program presents, lacking proper leadership.
Marchisella added that given this year's circumstances he would not have been comfortable enrolling his own children in the city-sponsored day camp program, had it been offered.
He pointed out that the cost of living has increased in Canada by 5.78 percent over the 2022 budget period
At the same meeting, council approved spending $10,000 to support the program at the city's Maplegate men's shelter, Larry's Place.
Newly-minted Maplegate Executive Director Theresa Hiuser assured councillors that pot smoking is OK on-premise, but use of harder drugs is verboten.
She explained the non-profit is in the process of applying for some $376,000 in funding needed to pay for women's and men's shelter programs in the city, this fiscal year.
Hiuser also explained that Maplegate serves a catchment area far larger than the City of Elliot Lake.
She said it answers the needs of homeless people from Spanish on the east to Sault Ste. Marie on the west, along with the area from the north shore up to Elliot Lake.
It was the first appearance before council by Hiuser and Maplegate public educator Allyson Gibson, who led the group's visual presentation and answered questions before council.
No.mention was made by anyone present about Maplegate's appeal to the Ontario Land Tribunal of council's decision not to approve a zoning change for two city houses.
Those residences at 143 Frobel Drive and 7 Diefenbaker Court were locations the agency had once planned to turn into additional women's and men's shelters. They have since both been listed for sale on the city's resale housing market.
Last week, Blind River town council deferred Maplegate's request for another $10,000 in program funding from that community.