After 3 nights of budget deliberations, council has decided to raise property taxes by 1.99%.
Budget Chair Brock McGregor says he’s happy with this number.
“For five years in a row now we’ve seen budget increase under inflation which is one of the goals that we set, we’ve increased funding on infrastructure by $4.1-million that’s a fairly significant investment in infrastructure in our community and still kept the increase under inflation it’s been a process to do that with the new councilor and obviously some learning opportunities through that,” says McGregor. “The thing to take away is that we maintained service levels, that’s important to community members, that’s what we heard during the election, that people didn’t want to see services cut. We looked at that with the arena, and usage with a number of services, and if we’re looking at budgets to get any lower, we’d have to look at service reductions in many ways. And there isn’t the appetite for that in the community right now.”
Before passing the budget, council decided to continue offering the $210 Senior Bus Pass, hiring an environmental planner, setting aside $250,000 for a potential new arena, and redesigning the municipal website.
