The City of Sarnia's draft budget for 2022 calls for an increase of about three per cent in municipal property taxes.
City administrators released budget highlights and presented them to council Monday.
Treasurer Holly Reynolds said overall, the proposed budget amounts to nearly $164 million with around $85 million to be raised through taxation.
"While we're expecting that there will be continued COVID financial impacts through 2022, those impacts have not been embedded in the budget," said Reynolds. "We do believe that we'll have sufficient safe restart funding, both in the general levy and in transit to cover any of the impacts in 2022."
Reynolds said there were some key drivers, including salary, wage and benefit increases.
"We did recognize that an increase to the student wage rates might be required in 2022 in order to attract the best students possible. We did find that 2021 was a little challenging, for a number of reasons, but minimum wage was a challenge and we're expecting that to continue through 2022."
Reynolds said staff hope to mitigate the budget increase through the operating contingency reserve.
"With a forecasted budget of $7 million dollars, it is sufficient to cover the $3.8 million dollars that we've proposed to move back into the operating budget."
Prior to any cuts, the tax hike would increase the city portion of the tax bill by about $28 per $100,000 of residential assessment.
Full draft budget details can be found here.
Sarnia city staff presented a draft capital budget last month which details $55 million in spending.
Budget day at city hall is December 7.