There might be some relief on the way for property taxpayers in the City of Belleville.
During a virtual ZOOM Thurlow Ward Town Hall meeting Monday night Councillor Paul Carr said staff is proposing a 2020
Operations budget featuring slight tax decreases based on last year’s property value assessments.
On a $250,000 house, the draft budget shows a .21% decrease for urban Belleville taxpayers, a .25% decrease for Cannifton urban, a.02% decrease for Cannifton rural, and a .61% decrease for ratepayers in the rural area.
This, even though in actual dollars the proposed budget is $3.5 million (3.49%) higher than last year’s and despite extra costs to the city of $3.9 million due to the Covid 19 pandemic.
Carr said staff did a great job bringing in a draft budget without large tax increases because of those Covid costs and explained that in order to do
so money was taken from reserve funds and money usually set aside for transfer to reserve accounts was instead used in the budget.
Carr added that if the city receives financial support from the federal and provincial government for pandemic costs, the reserve funds and transfers could be replenished.
“We have healthy reserves. We haven’t cleaned out our bank account, so to speak.”
Meanwhile Carr admitted to the 26 people who joined in on the online meeting that the pandemic had forced the city to cut back on hiring seasonal workers to control costs and that was having an impact on the look of the community.
“We’re managing to cut the grass and keep things looking good in our key parks but we haven’t been able to maintain the standards we’d like along rural roads and on some boulevards. We know it’s a problem but the pandemic has presented us with challenges and tough choices.”
City council will hold a special operations budget meeting Monday July 6 to discuss the draft budget in detail.
