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2020 financial statement shows City has a surplus

Lloydminster City Council has accepted and approved their Consolidated Financial statements for 2020.

The document which was prepared by local chartered professional accountants WLS Wilkinson Livingston Stevens LLP and was presented to Council on Monday April 26th.

On the plus side, the report shows a rise in financial assets of about $13.8 million with liabilities close to $3 million. This gives an increase in net financial assets of about $11 million.

The City has a surplus of $9.9 million for the year which was more than double what had been budgeted. Municipal taxes are slightly down from last year and user fees have shown a sharp decline off what was budgeted.

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The City would be in the red except for the grants received from both the Alberta and Saskatchewan provincial governments. Given the challenges of the past year, Mayor Gerald Aalbers is grateful for the grant dollar supports.

“The Financial report that we just finished receiving for 2020  showed in essence a positive because of resiliency money provided by the two provinces. I really want to give them credit and thank them for that otherwise we would have had a deficit into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Without the help from the provincial governments the City would have had a deficit of over $790,000. However, even though the City benefited from a surplus of $1.8 million as income from it’s operations, the funding for capital projects came in at about $8 million and the overall surplus on what was budgeted comes to $9.9 million. The Mayor references the $1.8 million dollars as a Resiliency Fund which they will hold in reserve to see where 2021 takes the City.

On the downside, Mayor Aalbers admitted there are lean times ahead.

“It’s going to be a tougher and leaner next couple of years. We have seen that direction from Saskatchewan. We receive a portion, namely .75 of one per cent of the PST as allocated to municipal sharing.”

On the Alberta side with the case of the Alberta Sustainability Funding Initiative, Mayor Aalbers welcomes an increase.

“They have given us an increase going into this year of 25 per cent knowing it’s  going to decrease by 50 per cent the following two years. So we are going to be looking to try to stretch infrastructure dollars.”

The Mayor indicated that a revised budget will be coming in May when the Mill rate will be set.

The 2020 Audited Consolidated Financial statement is available online at the City’s website.

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