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Business as usual for Credit Valley Conservation’s 2023 budget

January 27, 2023   ·   0 Comments

By JAMES MATTHEWS, LOCAL JOURNALISM INITIATIVE REPORTER

The Credit Valley Conservation Authority came up with a business-as-usual budget for 2023.

Quentin Hanchard, the CVC’s CAO, shared details of the authority’s budget with Mono town council when it met on Jan. 25.

The municipality is expected to kick in a general levy of $12,194 to the CVC to help cover some of its priorities for this year. And there’s a special levy of $2,916 for a total shared levy of $15,110.

“Our budget really is a business-as-usual budget,” Hanchard said. “The intent of it is to maintain our current program capacity and our service levels.”

The organization also focuses on ensuring its infrastructure is maintained in good condition and meets the needs of residents.

“We do work very hard to make sure that we are maintaining our current base and that we’re minimizing the impacts of the increases year over year,” he said.

The CVC undertakes five broad service areas this year. The principal area is natural hazards planning and risk management. This year, the floodplain hazard mapping in urban areas will be updated. The CVC will work to improve flood forecasting models.

“That’s a key resource for us,” he said. “To be able to give real-time information in terms of where the flooding is actually occurring on the ground.”

Work to decommission the Monora Pond is expected to be completed in 2023. And the Murphy Hill Trail at Island Lake will be reconstructed to incorporate more accessibility.

“We did have quite a lot of success in 2022 in terms of getting that Monora Pond offline,” he said. “Really pleased with how it was starting to look. It was revegetating and is set up really well for the next stages we’ll get into in 2023.”

On the corporate side, the CVC will continue with a compensation review, implement accessible communications, and renew the strategic plan.

Hanchard said the CVC is very adept at availing of outside grant money for programming. In devising the 2023 budget, the group was able to attain some efficiencies and reductions through renegotiating contracts.

“We were able to find more than $200,000 worth of those efficiencies,” he said.

The CVC works hard through securing federal and provincial grants to ensure the capital needs are piled onto what they request of their municipal partners.

Mayor John Creelman said Island Lake Family Park is essentially an unofficial entrance to the Island Lake Conservation Area. Many people use it to avoid paying the entrance fee at the proper gate.

“From a budgeting standpoint, it is concerning,” Creelman said. “You have so many people who are entering your facility without paying the entrance fee.

“I think we need to engage with you on an ongoing basis about what to do there.”

Creelman said many residents are saddened by the Monora Pond decommissioning and wish they’d spoken up in opposition to it.

He said many municipalities are under pressure with their budgeting. Some are considering tax increases in the range of three per cent, he said.

“We don’t want to see significant increases,” Hanchard said. “We know the pressure that you’re under. … We did a lot of work in the 2023 budget to keep it down as much as we could. It actually meant for us to make some cuts.”

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