Owen Sound Council and Staff will begin final talks on this year’s budget today — and the proposed tax increase at this point is 5.45 per cent.
That’s almost exactly what it was after pre-budget discussions ended in February but Mayor Deb Haswell is hopeful the number can be trimmed a bit by the time two days worth of deliberations wrap up on Thursday.
The Mayor, Acting City Manager Glen Henry and Director of Financial Services Wayne Ritchie presented the draft budget to the media at a news conference on Tuesday.
Haswell says the next two days will be a fine-tuning of those numbers.
She doesn’t want to guess how council will receive the information but she says there may well be some more opportunities for savings.
That said, Haswell praised staff for working hard to try to keep costs as low as possible.
Haswell says their work has come in the face of some challenges over which the city has no control, like an increase in pension rates and the loss of even more provincial grant money.
Even if the proposed increase is accepted as is by council, it will still be lower than last year’s tax increase of 5.81 per cent.
