Moncton City Council is deliberating on next year’s budget for three days starting this Wednesday.
Acting Chief Financial Officer Gregg Houser says some good news is a predicted $934,139 increase in city ‘own source’ revenue.
“Part of it is we’ve got revenues coming from the Avenir Centre, part of the arrangement we have is a guaranteed fee from them, as part of that there’s also ticket fees we get and other things we get from there,” says Houser. “There’s a small increase in bus fares that will come forth.”
Houser says it’s a 25 cent increase in the cash fare and that will be brought forth to Council this week to determine if it is acceptable.
“That was according to, I think, a five year plan they had through the Codiac Transpo Governance Committee that has been brought forth, I think it was two years ago,” says Houser.
He continues on saying there are a number of costly items on the capital budget, one of the biggest is the downtown reconstruction of Lutz Street.
Houser says they are also “putting monies into the North End Centre, up off of Ryan Road, and we’re looking at, gonna replace a significant amount of the bus fleet, the ones that aren’t new.”
He says they have applied for federal and provincial funding for the bus replacements.
Members of the public are welcome to attend budget deliberations – they begin at 8:30 in Council chambers at City Hall.
