City council starts 2018 budget review

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Chestermere city council started work on fulfilling a campaign promise many of them made, to find savings for Chestermere’s tax payers.
“We’ve been wanting to get at it for some time,” said Mayor Marshall Chalmers of the 2018 budget review that council started on April 4.
“We promised the electorate that that’s what we’d do, and we’ve done that,” he said.
Chalmers said that the information brought forward to council by city staff was well received as they began the review.
“It was apparent that administration, they were aware we were looking for any modifications to the already approved budget to find some savings for the…taxpayer,” he said.
“I’m extremely pleased to advise that we’ve made great progress in that area,” said Chalmers.
While he isn’t prepared to announce any specific numbers yet, since the review isn’t completed yet, but Chalmers said that there will, “absolutely,” be savings.
Administration has been asked to bring council some more information for the review which will resume on April 11 at 3 p.m.
“”We’ve asked them to get in there and dig as hard as they can,” he said.
Chalmers is expecting that council will be able to finish the review on April 11.
“They’re coming back with some more information before we make any decisions,” Chalmers said, “But for now the process is going very well.”
While council promised from the beginning that they would review the city’s 2018 budget, they wanted to wait until the strategic plan had been made so that the budget could appropriately reflect it.
“The budget that we’re going to approve, it will populate our new strategic plan,” said Chalmers.
“The plan speaks to what the people wanted,” he said, “It all just fits together.”

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