Enterprise budget cleans up to-do list
Hamlet aims for $2.5 million in capital spending
Paul Bickford
Northern News Services
Monday, April 13, 2015
ENTERPRISE
The Hamlet of Enterprise approved its annual budget March 26 with the goal of undertaking projects that have languished on the books for too long.
"The only thing that really stands out is the fact that we're finally getting to completing work that's been outstanding for years," said Mayor John Leskiw II of the budget. "I mean we've had stuff on the budget every year that seems we've never gotten around to finishing."
Leskiw pointed out the capital budget expense for the fiscal year that began on April 1 will total about $2.5 million, if everything goes according to plan.
The operation and maintenance budget is about $1.25 million for the community, which has about 115 residents.
Leskiw listed a number of projects that the hamlet hopes to complete this year, including the addition of more storage space and a fence to staff housing for the hamlet's senior administrative officer, an addition of another bay to the current three-bay municipal works garage and improvements to the hamlet hall by adding an office for a yet-to-be-hired lands administrator.
That position would be needed once the long-discussed transfer of Commissioner's land takes place from the GNWT to the hamlet.
"As I understand it, the only thing outstanding on the blocks they're allocating us is the actual surveying," said Leskiw, adding money has also been set aside to hire a lands administrator.
The mayor said council also set aside about $50,000 for an engineer to look at the Enterprise Community Centre, where last year community members brought forward concerns about the building sinking into the ground.
However, he said that is apparently not the case according to an engineering assessment, which determined the ground wasn't properly prepared for the building.
"When you get the permafrost and shifting in winter, the ground around it came up, not that the building went down," he said. "It gives the impression of the building going down."
On top of that, council voted to set aside $80,000 to buy new bunker gear for the hamlet's fire department.
"It's one of those things that nobody thinks about, but apparently the majority of our fire department bunker gear is not up to standard," Leskiw said, adding the hamlet also hopes to increase the size of the fire department. "We put a fair amount of money towards training the fire department, too, because they are very limited in what they can and can't do because of a lack of training."
The budget also includes fresh money to upgrade the hamlet's parks and trails and to make improvements to the landfill.
"We're doing things that the community needs and should have, as opposed to what the community actually wants," said Leskiw. "I mean they want their recreation, they want their fun things, things to make it look impressive, but these are things that have been outstanding that the community actually needs for administration to run the community properly."
The budget was unanimously approved by council.
