Regional District of Fraser-Fort George directors easily plowed through their first round of budget deliberations.
During a Wednesday afternoon committee of the whole meeting, the board passed all of the presented budget items regarding services shared by all regional district members without discussion or amendment.
These include budgets for governance, administration and planning, environment and and parks, and the 911 emergency response service.
Of the items presented - more will come during a second meeting in February - the board approved $12.7 million in expenditures and a proposed requisition of $7.6 million from property tax. Other revenue sources are user fees, the sale of services, grants and reserve funds.
Property assessments in the regional district increased by an average of 3.4 per cent - compared to 5.4 per cent in 2013 - with Mackenzie seeing the largest increase of 11.3 per cent.
Among the factors having an effect on the 2014 requisition levels are external cost increases and pressure from the regional district and the province's reporting requirements. So even though expenditures are down by about $50,000, the requisition levels have gone up by a little more than one per cent, overall.
Chief administrator Jim Martin characterized the 2014 financial plan as a "work within" budget and that staff had to take a zero-based budgeting approach.
"Instead of adding to a [budget] line, it's about zeroing out that line and seeing if it's the right amount and taking a hard look at the budget line by line," said Martin. "Staff are directed, if there's some areas where we're seeing some increases, we wanted to try and accommodate those for the most part within the budget."
Items on the regional district's 2014 work plan include drafting a policy for the management of operating reserve funds, a shoreline remediation project at Ness Lake regional park and the design and community consultation for a transfer station in Mackenzie.
