A major milestone for the City of Dryden.
A $12 million loan to pay off the Dryden Mobility debt has finally been paid off.
Finance Chair Norm Bush says 2021 will be the first year in six years that they will have some breathing room.
“We can truly look forward now to building on a future without having that huge anchor of annual debt payments in front of us. So thank goodness the shackles are finally off.”
Bush is thanking Council and Staff for sticking with the economic recovery plan and getting Dryden back on financial track, noting there were many pressures to refinance the DMTS debt and spread it out over more years.
He is also thanking former Mayor Craig Nuttall and CAO Joe Van Koeverden who first identified the true debt and annual losses and rang the alarm bell.
Bush says the City has learned a lot over the past years and new significant controls and measures are in place to provide transparency and prevent a similar situation.
“Those controls include things such as cash reserves and reserve funds being set up that can only be accessed through Council approval in open Council meetings. People will not be able to access reserve funds without Council approval and use them to shuffle money around and cover up and hide expenses. We also got a more transparent annual financial, third party, auditing process. We also have the requirement to have annual operating and capital budgets approved in December for the following year. And year-end financial reports to Council by policy. Annual year-end financial reports were missed for three years running in the middle of the DMTS fiasco, which meant there was no financial lens in to what was going on.”
