Goderich council held its first budget meeting this week.
"We are at a point where we've given the budget back to the staff to come back with some additional work done on it. I think we're at about five per cent at this stage, but we hope to get it down as close to zero as possible," said Grace.
Grace adds, they've managed to get it down to zero in each of the last three years.
"This term of council has worked very aggressively at making sure that we get it down to zero. But we only try to take the increase in the assessment every year, not to raise the taxes, just take the increase on assessment and then cut the cloth to fit."
Grace adds, taking money out of reserves to reduce the increase has never really been an option because lower tier municipalities don't usually have enough in reserves to make a significant impact on the budget.