By Cheryl Jahn

Final tax levy yet to be determined

Jan 25, 2021 | 9:46 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – Homeowners will have to wait a bit longer to learn how much the taxes will increase in 2021. That’s because Mayor and Council opted not to make the final decision tonight, deciding to go over each of the forty budgets in the different City department with a fine-toothed comb.

The perennial favourite budgets took up a great deal of attention. There was a recommendation to increase the snow budget to $10 million dollars from $8.5 million. The argument was made that the City is already spending $10 million annually as it is. And there was the suggestion from Councillor Cori Ramsay that, should Council opt not to approve the increase, the City “would definitely have to reduce services and I don’t know if there’s an appetite for that.”

The City is also suggesting Council increase the Road Rehabilitation budget by $150,000, the general budget by another $486,442 to meet contractual obligations and inflation.

Finally, there is a strong suggestion that the General Infrastructure Reinvestment Fund be increased. That’s is a fund used to try to bring the gap between the health of civic facilities and what’s the City is actually spending. The suggestion is that fund be increased by $125,000.

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All totalled, the suggested increases would total $2,261,422 which translate into a two percent tax hike.

However, the City was the recent recipient of $6.1 million in Safe Restart Funds from the Province. There was plenty of discussion around whether to spend roughly half of that money to reduce the tax hike to zero.

All of that will be hashed out on Wednesday.

by Cheryl Jahn

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Final tax levy yet to be determined

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