Bruce County Council approved the budget for the upcoming year, which comes with a 4.92 per cent tax levy increase.
A by-law to officially adopt the budget will be brought forward at the January 23 council meeting.
At Thursday's meeting, council heard that staff was able to meet the November request to bring forward a budget with no more than a five per cent increase.
Director of Corporate Services Sam Dinsmore told members how that happened.
"Since then, staff have learned information that has allowed us to get to the 4.92 per cent without having any deferrals in the 2025 budget," he said. "The information we learned was around growth, so the county's 2025 growth grew from 1.5 to 1.87 per cent. Working with Public Health, we were able to decrease their contribution to the 2025 budget."
Dinsmore added that the new agreement with the Nuclear Innovation Institute has no funding attached, so they were able to remove that from the budget.
Council members were in favour of staff getting increase below five per cent, but South Burce Peninsula Mayor Jay Kirkland said he'd almost like to see more money go into future planning.
"If there was any free dollars, I would be more in favour of putting those dollars into our asset management so we achieve it sooner than what we are projecting in the future," he said. "The more we can put toward that right now, it's almost saving for the future."
Bruce County's asset management plan requires a 2.5 per cent reinvestment rate in order to maintain the current level of infrastructure over the next 13 years.
Ultimately, the budget was approved as presented and will be voted on for adoption at the next council meeting.
