Easter egg hunt set

By Marilyn Craig Call 523-9318

Happy birthday to Will Nesbit, who will celebrate on April 8, and Kerry Diebold, who will celebrate on April 13. Happy birthday to both of you and enjoy your day. Happy anniversary to Gerald and Nancy Hakkers on April 7.

Don’t forget to come to the Easter egg hunt on Saturday sponsored by Friends of the Village of Blyth and supported by North Huron.

She went on to point out additional discrepancies between what she had submitted and what was before council. Luttenberger had planned for growth in areas like registration and memberships, a reasonable assumption for postpandemic recreation. “Again, those are not the numbers I submitted for the budget. I had submitted numbers depicting a growth in participation levels… in terms of recreation programs, off the top of my head, I had submitted about $104,000 for projected revenue, and Director Townes reduced it to $95,000,” she explained, which was just one example of the changes made. Palmer found it questionable that projected revenues were being trimmed, and Luttenberger concurred. She went on to point out yet another issue created by this mercurial budget, in regards to the recreation department’s miscellaneous expenses, budgeted at $20,000 every year. “It was for emergencies in the facilities, if we had to do an emergency repair, or replacement of equipment… that $20,000 has been deleted from the budget, and we need to have that $20,000 back in there, because, to be quite honest, we’ve already spent it.”

Palmer expressed additional concern about decreases in maintenance for facilities projected to grow in usage. All of these revelations raised further questions about who would be held accountable in the event of the recreation department going over budget. With Townes absent from the meeting, those questions remain unanswered. Palmer summed up his issues on the subject, saying “if there’s a deficit at the end of the year, it’s not the director’s fault that her budget is different from Director Townes’ budget… we know that there’s going to potentially be a problem, and it could be rectified.”

Councillor Wright voiced a similar sentiment, stating “I’m concerned about the process that was used to get here. I think there should be clear accountability with the different budgets… we’re going to be here this time next year, and if people are over budget or under budget, you can look the department manager in the eye and say ‘where did things go well, where did things go wrong?… I don’t know who to hold accountable for the recreation budget.” Wright elucidated the source of his concern, saying “Our Director of Finance is new to the area, I’m not aware of any background that they have in recreation, so what process did he use to come up with the numbers used in recreation to override our department manager on those numbers?” The absence of Townes proved yet again to be a detriment to the proceedings, as he was not available to explain his process. Ready or not, Deputy-Reeve Kevin Falconer motioned to accept the budget as presented, which was seconded by Whitfield. In a recorded vote, Palmer and Wright voted against approving the 2023 budget as presented, but were outvoted by the balance of council.