The Grand River Conservation Authority (GRCA) is facing challenges with its 2020 budget because of provincial cuts.
In 2019, the provincial government reduced the amount given to conservation authorities for flood management programs by 50 per cent. For the GRCA, this ended up being a cut of $420,000 from government funding.
Sonja Radoja, corporate services manager for GRCA, said the approach to deal with these cuts is a three-pronged strategy: dip into reserves, find additional revenue and savings from retirements.
Most importantly, there are no cuts to flood management programs which include flood warnings and flood response.
“We’re not doing any cuts to the program that funding was for,” Radoja said.
Radoja said they have identified revenue they can take from parks and conservation areas. GRCA have hydro-generating turbines and they will be taking revenue from that as well to offset the cuts.
Finally, they will have some administrative cost savings from staff retirements that can be incorporated to deal with the budget cut. Radoja said she’s not concerned in the short-term but there is uncertainty in the future.
“In the short-term, the strategies I outlined are manageable,” she said. “However, in the long-term what we really need now are these new regulations from the government about how conservation authorities will function. Then we need to come up with our long-term strategy to manage the funding environment.”
There was some modernization and changes to the Conservation Authority Act when Bill 108 was passed. More new regulations could impact how conservation authorities approach their budget. They are waiting to hear what they are from the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks but are also involved in this process.
“They are currently in a consultation process and we’re participating in that,” she said. “We’re hoping that we will have information on the new regulation soon this year.”
A draft budget report says the GRCA wants to avoid having the municipalities make up this difference. However, the general municipal levy is being increased by 2.5 per cent to $11.9 million from $11.6 million. Radoja said this is a standard increase and there has been no push-back from the municipalities.
“We started doing presentations to the municipalities for the past two months and I have to say we have not received any negative feedback,” Radoja said. “There’s at least an appreciation for not having to download that $420,000 funding cutback on to them.”
The proposed 2020 budget includes a total spending of $35,978,475. The draft budget will be presented to the GRCA board for approval this Friday at the annual general meeting in Cambridge.
