Budget or Lack of One

In my post of January 16th I reported that council came to an understanding on the 2008 budget. The motion to recommend council approve this years budget was passed by a vote of 6 to 1. Quite truthfully it felt good at that to have the budget process all but finished at that time. From there though things went south very quickly. When the exact same motion was made at the next regular council meeting a motion to table for more information from Crowsnest Centre was passed instead.

Subsequently the president of the board and the manager of the Centre presented their business plan to council and showed us how they would manage the Centre for the next few years. There were a couple of minor addition mistakes in the plan (which of course at best is an educated guess). When the motion to approve the budget was again made it failed by a vote of 4 to 3 presumably because of the mistakes in the business plan. We are now close to jeopardizing planned projects in this years budget.

At the next regular meeting of council I again made the motion to approve this year's spending. One councilor was absent due to holidays. A councilor that previously voted to defeat the budget now voted in favour of it. On the other hand a councilor that previously voted to pass the budget now voted to defeat it. The motion fails due to a tie vote 3 to 3. Looks like this year could be a repeat of last. While it is still possible to have a budget in place by the middle of March it may already be too late for some projects.