Huron East council is moving ahead with a budget that will increase the municipal levy around 4.5 per cent.
Council received a presentation from CAO Brad McRoberts at Tuesday's meeting, where he outlined that the town was finally in a position to deal with some historical operational deficits that have built up over the last three years.
McRoberts said that now that they were in a spot with a moderate levy, they could balance the budget.
"It's been a rough go guys, I know it's been a tough two or three years with some fairly significant tax increases, but I think we're finally getting past that hurdle and looking like we'll be in good shape going forward," he told council. "We'll be able to support all of our existing assets on the schedules that are presented and we'll be looking at fairly modest tax levy increases over the next four or five years."
According to McRoberts report, a previous 2.1 per cent levy within the budget as recommended by the Asset Management plan was hidden within a reserve transfer line under the General Revenues and undiscovered until recently. The levy has since been removed, but an additional $225,000 and $300,000 was collected in 2023 and 2024.
Staff recommended putting those funds toward the historical operational deficit, which would cover nearly all of it. It was also recommended an additional levy contribute $221,000, which would fully settle past deficits and keep around $200,000 for an operational reserve.
Councillor Ray Chartrand questioned whether it was necessary to make that big of a contribution to reserves and Mayor Bernie MacLellan said that council might want to halve that amount.
"I understand the comment you're making Councillor Chartrand is that, taxpayers have been hit pretty hard the last few years and if we don't need to up it anymore, why do we up it?" he said. "Would it make sense to split the difference and have $100,000 (go into operational reserve)? Because there's two things that we don't know at the moment: one, we don't know if we'll have another winter like we have now and two, we don't know where the OPP thing will come out."
MacLellan said the rural OPP financial relief sounded like just a one-year reprieve and could result in a higher levy going forward.
With the $121,000 contribution approved, staff estimated a municipal levy of around 4.4 to 4.5 per cent. The projections for the next four years range from 3.6 per cent in 2027 to 5.8 per cent in 2028.
The Huron East tax rate will be calculated once the County levy is determined, after which staff will present the associated by-law to council. The final approval for the budget is set for the March 18 council meeting.