A small crowd joined city staff and council Tuesday night at the Humboldt Uniplex as Manager Roy Hardy outlined their budget plans for the next five years.

The meeting continued to focus on large expenditures such as a five year, $2.6 million storm water plan.

Hardy said they want their spending to be transparent to taxpayers.

"Here's the types of major projects that the city is looking at doing over the next number of years. Council over the next month or so is going to go through the process of making some final decisions on what goes forward and what may end up getting delayed or changed for 2016."

A multi-purpose space added on to the Uniplex is also on the city's wish list but that is likely a decade away.

Something that is much more crucial is storm water control. Many people suffered from flooded basements during a storm last Summer. Now the city has a five year plan to alleviate that.

"That's going to cost us over an average of $500,000 a year over the next five years," Hardy explained. "We've got to talk about how we're going to cover that cost obviously within our city budget and how to balance that."

The plan looks like this; running twin pipes out to the Water Ridge pond and some work at Centennial Park, that's earmarked for this year.

In the future, plans such as King Crescent upgrades, the construction of storm ditches, new outfall along 6th Avenue plus additional storm retention ponds around the city.

With that all being said, a proposed 3.89 percent increase could soon be on council's desk.

"There would still have to be about $250,000 in reduced programs. The question then becomes if you want to reach that, what is it that council wants us to take a look at? Where does it want us to get those dollars from to bring it down to that level?"

Some programs under review are the airport and it's importance to the city, the food and beverage system at the Uniplex plus tent and land rentals within the city.

Based on the average home assessment of $139,000, the proposed increase will equal about $6.83 a month. For a home assessed at $300,000, the monthly increase is about $18.25 a month.

Managing growth was again discussed during the meeting, as was the conversion to garbage bins from the current bag and tag system.

You can hear more from Hardy below in his interview with Bolt FM's Clark Stork.