GORE BAY—The Manitoulin Planning Board (MPB) has increased its budget by six percent for this year.
At a recent meeting, the MPB approved a budget in the amount of $224,902 as recommended by the board’s budget committee. “We anticipate having increased costs that would increase our required revenues by about six percent,” Jake Diebolt of the MPB told The Expositor. “The budget committee recommended that the board increase municipal requisitions by a maximum of three percent, with the remainder (a further three percent) to be covered using the (MPB) surplus for the prior year, in order to mitigate the financial burden on our member municipalities.”
Mr. Diebolt explained the main areas that contributed to the MPB budget increased costs are related to conference expenses, increases to accounting fees for the annual audit, increases to staff training costs, anticipated increase costs for phone and internet services, anticipated costs for website upgrading and maintenance and an increase of three percent for staff salaries and wages and associated payroll burden. The increase to salaries and wages was set at three percent to match annual inflation as per the Consumer Price Index.
