At this point, Kamloops staff aren’t expecting to have to dip into any reserve funds to help balance the budget this year.

The city has more than $13.5 million in general reserves.

“In my mind, these should be used as a last resort to balance the budget, or to use as a purposeful choice to fund a specific project. We’re not just sort of drawing from the general reserve to balance the general budget, so I think we’ve found lots of other activities that can do that,” finance director Kathy Humphrey says.

“Reserves could be used to supplement funding for projects which have been deferred if council so chooses. The only consideration with that is we need to consider a little bit of cash flow. If the city is expecting a reduction in either property taxes or in some of these other funds, we don’t want to go too crazy spending money we didn’t plan to.”

Humphrey says the city’s cash flow continues to be stable as well, with most payments so far being made on time.

“So up until now, all of the payments and all of the month-to-month payments have been nearly full. So far, we haven’t seen any changes. But we do expect that will change as the summer goes on.”

The city has now cut more than $7.2 million in spending for this year, to make up for lost revenues from closures related to the COVID-19 pandemic.