Robert Fisher
Staff Reporter
KILLALOE – Coun. Bil Smith addressed council for the Township of Killaloe, Hagarty and Richards (KHR) at the Sept. 17 meeting about a planned Finance Committee meeting for Sept. 30 and Mayor David Mayville’s desire to hold future committee meetings to try to better understand the township budget and get a handle on finances to determine where cuts may be possible.
Council has voiced its opposition to such meetings previously. Smith made a notice of motion at the last council meeting that he would be bringing forward a motion at the Sept. 17 meeting.
“I think we don’t need to have them,” Smith began, “and that’s based on my experience of having worked in nonprofit and in finance-type positions for the past 25 years.
“We have staff who we pay to be experts and to do this work for us. I don’t believe that it is the job of council to go over, line by line, the budget. At this point, we’ve done that several times before and I’d like this council to consider postponing the meeting that’s scheduled for September 30th.”
Coun. Brian Pecoskie asked Smith if Smith believed no benefit would come from the Sept. 30 meeting. Smith said council has gone through the budget in detail previously and that the stated purpose of the meeting was to understand why expenses are so high. “I’m saying that the work we’ve done so far, we know why the expenses are so high. Additionally, if we need to make cuts, it’s our department heads who can recommend those cuts to us as they have in the past.”
Mayville handed out some information to councillors. He later posted the information to his mayoral Facebook page.
“As you are aware, I’ve tried, several times, through charts, graphs and discussions to get this council to analyze the expense budget of 2024. This is about having a deeper understanding about what went into the 2024 budget and why we had a 17 per cent tax increase.”
The mayor presented statistics about where KHR stands relative to the rest of the county. It has the fifth highest property tax rate and had the second highest tax increase for 2024.
“I have always been very open to listening to any recommendations by council or staff to move us in a corrective direction instead of just dishing this job off to staff without council understanding what needs to be done. It’s council’s responsibility to understand our situation and then direct staff to make hard decisions.” The mayor asked if anyone had comments about his remarks.
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