Positive reviews from BDO regarding North Bay’s consolidated financial statement.

They were reviewed by Dean Decaire.

Mayor Al McDonald says he pointed out that North Bay’s long term liabilities decreased by $6 million in 2017 and the financial assets increased by $8 million year to year.

He says it’s a good sign that the debt is going down and more is being put into reserves.

“Our infrastructure spending is going up. The thing I’m most proud of when we do take on debt to do capital infrastructure we amortize it over 10 years so we’re not putting that on to our children and grand-children,” he says.
The city is well within the recommended reserve threshold which is between $50 and $75 million.

North Bay’s at $63 million.

Councillor Mike Anthony would like to see that lower.

He says the city could stay within the threshold and at the same time give people a break on their taxes.

“If we took 10 of that and over the next term of council used $2.5 million a year to lower taxes and give people a break we’d still have $53 million in reserves and that’s 3 million more than the auditor says would give us a good healthy benchmark,” Anthony says.
In infrastructure, the city invested near $29 million last year and some of that was financed by debt but some was also financed by grant funding.

Filed under: city-council