County taxpayers will pay an extra $15.97 per $100,000 of residential assessment after the upper-tier government passed its 2025 budget at a council meeting Dec. 11.
The budget carries a 4.82 per cent levy increase plus a 1.5 per cent capital levy.
The Minden-based municipality determined it needs nearly $25 million from ratepayers for the coming year, about a $1.7 million increase. The capital levy is to help pay for aging infrastructure, such as roads, bridges and culverts in future. The capital levy will raise more than $358,000. There has also been 1.45 per cent assessment growth to aid the budget.
Treasurer Andrea Robinson told council, “almost 80 per cent of that levy increase is outside of the County’s control, with inflation, transfers, and catch up, or loss of funding.”
She added staff had utilized reserves along with phasing in new positions in an effort to reduce the required ask in 2025. However, she said that would impact 2026.
CAO Gary Dyke said, “with the challenges being faced, I think we have a very progressive budget. We work very hard in prioritizing our funding into areas that we think are really impactful, while recognizing the demands on the lower-tiers as well as the ratepayers across the County.”
Taxpayers give money to their township, the County and the school board.
Coun. Bob Carter said he thought the levy increase “was still too high. At the end of the day, there’s less take-home pay for lots of people. And we’re already in a tough situation. Each of the municipalities is going to have even more challenging numbers because of the deficit in our infrastructure. I would like us to see what more can possibly be done.”
Coun. Liz Danielsen asked for his suggestions on how the levy could be lowered.
Carter said they needed to look at library funding, one of the few discretionary expenditures at the County. He suggested they also look at the tourism department and how much is being spent there.
Dyke said he thought, if anything, they needed to boost spending for tourism and economic development.
As for the overall budget, Dyke added he thought staff had done “an amazing job” with the past two budgets, considering the operation of the County itself is just one per cent of the levy figure. He said if they dropped it further, they would be getting into service cuts “and I’m not quite sure where they’d come from.
“We need a better system in which we collect our revenue. We’re stuck in a regressive tax program in which that is the only way the province will let us collect money, and it’s broken and it needs to be fixed.”
Coun. Cec Ryall added, “it’s not just the cost of doing it, it’s the cost of not doing it. If we choose not to do it, what is the impact?”
Danielsen said staff had cut the levy in half since the first draft, “so to ask staff to take a look and cut some more is a bit of a knee jerk reaction at this point in time. There’s been a lot of work done.”
Coun. Carter said he believes there are efficiencies to be found with things such as five roads’ departments. He said they talk about efficiencies but are not seeing tangible results. “We can’t continue to tax people here so they can no longer afford to live here. We are contributing to the economic problem.”
Dyke said he hoped to reinvigorate the service delivery review in 2025 but it would not impact next year’s budget.
Council passed the budget.
