The impact of COVID-19 shutdowns is starting to show on municipal finances across northwestern Ontario.
City of Dryden Treasurer Steven Lansdell-Roll says revenues are right now down about $618,201 compared to 2020 budget projections.
“Primarily due to the facility closures due to the pandemic. So our user fee revenues are down and at the airport as well with no commercial flights happening. But we did receiving some provincial funding that’s going to help mitigate those lost revenues.”
The emergency funding totals roughly $450,000.
However, the City has seen spending go down considerably.
A financial update shows operating expenses are $2,262,767 below budget.
Lansdell-Roll says once again facility closures played a major role.
“Also we had quite a bit of vacant positions throughout the year which can be good and can be bad because the workload didn’t go away. So when those positions aren’t filled, that means that others need to pick-up that workload and that can be challenging for prolonged periods of time.”
The City has spent in 7,764,537 on salaries, wages and benefits, which is nearly $1.3-million below projections.
“With the pandemic and the impacts that we had to our operations and additional PPE that we had to procure. Having those savings really, really helped but it did impact some people for sure.”
Overall Dryden is looking at an estimated $950,385 surplus at the end of the year.
Lansdell-Roll says their capital budget hasn’t really been impacted by the pandemic other than timelines.
“The majority of our projects came in and they came in on budget. For 2020-2021 we’re just in the development stages of putting together that draft plan for Council to review in November.”
Lansdell-Roll notes there are a handful of projects that didn’t get off the ground because government grants never came through.
