Huron County Council has finalized its budget for 2018.
Treasurer Michael Blumhagen explains council approved a levy increase of 3% and that will be officially approved at the county council meeting on March 7th. Blumhagen adds the reserves are stil in very good shape so in the short term that's not a concern. But he also points out several bridges in the county will be reaching their end of life in the next 20 to 25 years so he wants to make sure the reserves are there to address that issue and that means using reserves to balance the budget is not a good practice over the long term. Blumhagen says once again reductions in the Ontario Municipal Partnership funding, this year in the amount of $300,000, continue to be an issue.
“Council approved a levy increase of 3% for 2018. It's not officially approved. That will be approved at our public session on March 7th. Approximately $1.7-million was taken from reserves in order to mitigate our increase for 2018.”
“We do know we're going to have some significant concerns once our bridge program, the end of life for many of our bridges are coming up so we really wanna make sure that we have the reserves in place to be able to mitigate some of the pressures we're gonna see twenty or twenty-five years down the road.”
