MANITOWANING—Assiginack township municipal council has approved, by a majority vote, a budget increase of seven percent.
At a council meeting held last week, council took a recorded vote to take approximately $62,000 from its reserves from the sale of the former township owned Canada Post and Bank of Montreal building to decrease the budget increase to seven percent.
It was pointed out by Assiginack Mayor Brenda Reid that, at a council meeting the previous week, a motion had been put forward for council’s consideration that would have seen a nine percent budget increase. However, the motion was defeated with Mayor Reid and Councillor Dwayne Elliott voting in favour of the increase, and Councillors Janice Bowerman and Jennifer Hooper opposed to the nine percent increase. Councillor Rob Maguire did not attend that special council meeting two weeks ago.
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“I saw the meeting later online and the conversation of council in trying to find savings in the budget,” said Councillor Maguire. “I’m concerned with a proposed nine percent increase as well, but I also understand we can’t remain status quo.”
“Over the years we (council) have always tried to keep the budget as low as possible,” said Councillor Maguire. He said in looking at some neighbouring Island municipalities and their tax increases over the past two years, Central Manitoulin has seen about a 10 percent increase over the past two years, with Gore Bay being about 9.5 percent and NEMI almost 11 percent. “So, we’re kind of in the same ballpark. I know a nine percent increase is a tough pill to swallow.” He said council had put about $125,000 in reserve through the sale of the post office building and had already put $95,000 aside in reserve for future development of the new fire hall.
“We are almost six months into the year, and we haven’t set our budget for this year,” said Councillor Maguire. “We don’t have a report where we stand as far as receiving funding from Ontario. Either way, if we take some of the funds out of the post office sale reserve we can bring the increase down by two percent and we wouldn’t be giving up all our contingencies.”
“With a seven percent budget increase, the municipality would still have some money on hand for planning and development,” said Councillor Dwayne Elliott. He pointed out one of the reasons council is in the situation it is in now is because there has only been one increase in taxes by council over the past 10 years, which took place last year, to increase the budget by two percent. “We are substantially behind the rest of the municipalities on this,” he said.
Councillor Hooper noted that while Assiginack does not have the highest millrate on the Island, their assessments seem to be higher than most. She said there are people within the township that will be paying about $10,000 per year on their home after the next MPAC assessment changes. “I agree with Rob (Maguire) that we should take some funds from our reserve from the post office sale to bring the budget down.”
“We have to appreciate some people will be struggling,” stated Councillor Hooper. “And what happens is that if people can’t pay high taxes, eventually more people will leave and there will be no development in the township. I think it is a good idea to lower the budget increase to seven percent.”
Councillor Bowerman agreed that some funds should be taken out of reserve to allow a two percent decrease to seven percent in the budget.
“I am opposed to taking any funds out of reserves to be used to lower operating costs,” stated Mayor Reid. “If we take approximately $60,000 out of our reserves we will never be able to put this amount back in. I am opposed to seven percent if it means taking out of our reserves to reduce the budget.”
It was suggested by Councillor Maguire that council could look at the disposition of some of the older public works department equipment. “Maybe we would make a few dollars in revenues there. I’m comfortable with a seven percent increase. It is at least palatable. I’m not comfortable with a nine percent increase. Hopefully, we will be able to find efficiencies next year to keep our taxes down.”
Councillor Elliott said he didn’t think it will be easy to find efficiencies in next year’s budget and noted that, regardless of the budget increase for this year, none of the municipal departments budgets have increased, “and the township still has things like a backhoe that needs to be bought in the near future.”
Councillor Maguire said, “I’m comfortable with the fact that it is June, and we can’t find much in the way of savings. And we would not be looking at taking all the post office funds out, just a portion.”
It was pointed out the township is looking to increase all its building rental fees by 10 percent next year.
“There are lot of things we need to look at making changes to, such as trailer fee rates,” said Councillor Hooper. “We made more on the sale of the post office building than we had expected to. Some of this can be used to offset the higher increases in the budget.”
“In the general spirit of compromising to pass the budget, I would be in favour of seven percent,” said Councillor Elliott.
A motion was put forward to reduce the budget by two percent by taking approximately $62,000 out of its reserves from the sale of the post office to bring the budget down to a seven percent increase.
All members of council voted in favour of adopting the budget, with Mayor Reid the sole dissenting vote.
