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The city of Estevan is reporting their 2025 budget after receiving feedback from residents over the last month.
The original budget was proposed on January 16th, with efforts by the city and the local Estevan Chamber of Commerce to gather feedback for the budget.
City Manager Jeff Ward lays out a couple of items that came up for the city while the budget was being proposed.
"During the open feedback from the budget, there was one part of a pathway that was identified to pave in front of the curling rink. So you know, it's a fairly small cost to connect Centennial Park over to the curling rink parking lot. So council's made the motion to move forward with that during budget deliberations."
"We also had an issue with the digital sign at Affinity Place, which advertises our events, anything at the Leisure Centre and Affinity Place. So that was an amendment to the budget of a net impact of about $48,000. So as Councillor Veroba mentioned, we want to continue to have that sign to showcase what we have at that facility. So Council made that amendment as well."
While the council has gathered feedback from the community concerning the budget over the last few years, this time Ward says they updated their methods.
"I know we've put out the budget for the last number of years. I believe the last eight or nine years of requesting feedback, but it was more mainly in digital form. This is the first time the Council's really wanted to have the opportunity for people to come in and talk publicly with them."
"The two open houses at the tech hub we had, I believe four first time and 10 the second time, there was also a great report from the (Estevan Chamber of Commerce) in regards to surveying their members. So you know, as I mentioned, not everything gets changed, but it's feedback for Council, it's clarification on certain funding agreements that we may have in place and we'll definitely change up some formatting, so it's a little easier to read as we move forward."
While the budget is now officially adopted by the city there is still one area that the council is having discussions on.
"There is still one about a cost associated with additional fire inspections in the city because that includes labour discussions we are doing that in closed meeting," said Ward. "So there may be an additional amendment to the budget moving forward, but as of right now it's a budget with those two amendments for the digital sign and the paving and that's been passed."
Ward says he's excited to have more community feedback in the future as they'll be keeping with the public process.
"We had our first coffee with the Council here last week and there was actually, I believe there was eight or nine people that came to that. So I know Council's committed to continuing that transparency moving forward and letting people have a voice where they can come chat with councillors individually and get some answers. So this won't be the end of the transparency discussion with Council and City Hall, and I look forward to seeing how it unfolds moving forward."