In 1997 the Council agreed (with Bonneville) to plan to make budget cuts totaling approximately $5.4 million over four years, fiscal years 1998 through 2001. At that time, it was anticipated that the Council's role would diminish in power planning and fish and wildlife program development. Much of the Council's budget cuts in 1997 were based on these predictions.
Instead, the Council's role and workload has increased substantially. Electricity industry restructuring is far from being fully implemented and as a result, the Council continues to be heavily involved in regional power resource planning, hydrosystem operations analysis, energy system reliability/adequacy and conservation resource issues. In addition, the Council has increased accountability for fish and wildlife spending, implemented a new project selection process, including site review at the province level by the Independent Scientific Review Panel, is guiding the development of subbasin plans throughout the region, and is amending its fish and wildlife program. In short, we have an enhanced role and new responsibilities in the region for fish and wildlife restoration.
These proposed budgets reflect increased contracting needs in the power planning division during their development of the fifth power plan in FY 2003, and illustrate the Council's efforts to contain costs by absorbing inflationary increases over the next two years. The Council's FY 2003 revised budget of $8,493,000 is $154,000 higher (1.8%) than the current year 2002 budget of $8,339,000. The proposed FY 2004 budget of $8,499,000 is $6,000 higher (0.08%) than the revised FY 2003 budget.
This budget was adopted at the August 13-14, 2002 Council meeting.
