Central Huron council approved its budget at this week's council meeting.
Mayor Jim Ginn explains the county and education tax rates are down slightly this year so they balanced their out to come with a combined zero percent increase.
He adds Central Huron's rate on its own would have called for an increase of about 4%. Ginn says the lower county and education rates definitely helped but he also points out they're still dealing with funding cuts from the province and there are some things that have to get done and should be done now rather than pay more later.
As far as funding from the province Ginn says he doesn't have any reason to believe there's going to be any relief there in the immediate future. He says with an election in June now would be the time to step and announce more funding but so far none of the provincial party's have done that.
”We went with a zero percent overall tax hike. So there were slight decreases in the county and education tax rate so we balanced our out to make it zero across the board so we'd a had a slight increase, about a 4% increase in ours.”
“There's an opportunity and of course we're still experiencing funding cuts from the government and ...you know there's some projects we need to do and sometimes if you don't do them on time it ends up costing you more in the long run than just biting the bullet and getting them done.”