Perth County council has approved its budget in principle following presentations from staff at last week's meeting.
Treasurer Corey Bridges says the 2023 budget was adopted in principle with a 9.06 percent increase to the levy in the total amount of $19,765,573 - an increase of $1,642,517 from 2022. Bridges says the 2023 taxable assessment in Perth County from 2022 will cover 2.54 percent of the levy with the remaining 6.52 percent being the levy increase directly related without the County’s 2022 assessment growth.
“Which on a typical single family home would be just under a fifty dollar increase. So out of our levy stabilization reserve, which was used to remove those highs and lows, we've removed about 400-thousand to get to our six and a half per cent," Bridges stated.
Bridges also cautions this is not going to be a one year problem.
“For the 2024 budget it's still going to be one of those difficult years that will see still those impacts on those increased costs, so we're going to be looking at this for probably into 2024," added Bridges.
Bridges says he hopes the pressure will start to ease in 2025 and growth will continue to offset some of the costs they'll face. Bridges also notes that the reduction in provincial transfers to the municipalities has had a significant impact their budgets.
