On Thursday 26 November 2015, the Syndicat Intercommunal de Gestion Informatique (SIGI) reported that an agreement had been reached on the 2016 budget following a deliberation between SIGI committee members which took place the previous Thursday.
"This is a budget which forms part of a continuity of actions started in 2014 and 2015 aimed at strengthening the services provided to municipalities through a thorough understanding of municipal trades combined with excellence in IT solution development," commented Yves Wengler, Mayor of the City of Echternach and Chairman of SIGI, who presented the budget for 2016.
Key elements of the regular budget for the year 2016 are:
- An increase in revenues and ordinary expenses from €14.2 million in 2015 (rectified budget) to €14.9 million in 2016;
- An increase in personnel costs relative to the increase in internal staff, in addition to mechanical wage increases;
- A sharp rise in prices of Microsoft licenses
- A carryover to 2016 of €0.5 million in the form of compensation fund, expected to be fully utilised in 2016;
- A contribution of €23.96 per capita.
The president emphasised that the retention of a surplus from 2015 to 2016 and therefore a limitation to the progression of the contribution in 2016 were made possible through budget compliance, expenses lower than the budget, even though additional and unforeseen projects (for example PSDC projects, Cockpit or Fiche de Traitement) were voted without additional funding over the course of 2015.
The committee reported that the construction of a new building, a first part of which has been provisionally set for an amount of €650,000 in the 2016 budget, will be presented separately as a committee decision.
The extraordinary projects of the 2016 budget include 'Municipal Affairs' which aims to facilitate the administrative management of the municipality, such as meetings and correspondence, and 'Home and Heritage' which allows leaders to gain a a synthetic overview of the situation of town buildings, in terms of inventory, use and consumption, for example.
Yves Wengler expressed satisfaction with the approach in which the extraordinary projects were individually assessed and voted on by the Committee, an approach which he stated aims to increase transparency in financial management and in collaboration with the municipalities. In 2015, no additional funding was required for the achievement of unbudgeted projects. Yves Wengler however stated that this could not be the case in 2016 as the financial reserves would decline to €0.8 million by the end of 2016. Included in the list of non-budgeted extraordinary projects was a series of major projects to be individually presented to delegates of the muicipalities.
During the closed session, the representatives of the 104 member municipalities voted for the inclusion of three people: one facility manager, one editor for the accounting department and one employee for the Financial Management services. SIGI has taken on a total of 10 new exployees in 2015.
