Chatham-Kent council sharpened their pencils and moved some numbers around to get the property tax increase to 3.36% during the second night of budget deliberations.
Council started the night at 4.71%.
Among the cuts and changes made by council included taking $517,000 out of the capital budget, removing a $419,906 municipal cost share for childcare due to a provincial ministry funding reduction, deferring $250,000 from the storm sewer lifecycle budget to the next couple of years, as well as funding a number of fire service items totaling $697,000 from strategic reserves rather than from the main budget.
“I think there was a lot of areas where we were able to manoeuvre the funds into a direction where there wasn’t going to be a large tax impact,” says South Kent Councillor Anthony Ceccacci. “There was a lot of very difficult areas that were cut but there was lot of areas where we were able to move the money around where it’s not going to impact the tax rate, it’s actually going to lower it.”
Council decided to put slot revenue from the Chatham casino into the operation budget instead of the Community Investment Fund.
The $31.9 million police budget, which had a 1.75 percent increase, has been given the green light. Chatham-Kent Police Chief Gary Conn says it’s well below the council recommended two percent guideline and in line with inflation.
A third night of budget deliberations will take place tonight. If council can’t wrap up budget deliberations tonight, they will meet again next week.
