PENHOLD – With a tough economic climate in mind, town council is not raising property taxes for local homeowners in 2020.
Budget deliberations took place at the end of November and the Penhold budget passed at a council meeting on Dec. 9.
“I’m happy with it. Every year we try to keep residents' taxes as low as we can and I think we did a really good job of that this year,” said Mayor Mike Yargeau. “It’s tough times for everybody. I think we recognize that and make sure to do our part.
Trish Willis, the town's corporate services manager, outlined details of this year’s budget, including increases and decreases in residential and non-residential (commercial) assessments, capital expenses and changes to policing costs, that were recently announced by the province.
“We had a meeting on November 26 that we discussed and went through all of the budget and at the time the direction that council and administration was given was to aim to collect the same dollar value of taxes that we did in 2019,” said Willis. “We went through every department and we went through all of the capital and recently reviewed the expenditures."
Willis went on to say that for assessment values the town's residential portion in 2019 increased by $2.4 million, whereas non-residential (commercial) assessments decreased by about $1.3 million. She added for the recently annexed area (from the county) of Penhold, both residential and non-residential assessments also increased by smaller amounts.
“What that meant is we had an overall assessment change, which is still positive, $1,106,670,” she said. “In the annexed area, their rates also increased a little bit. The residential assessment within the annexed area went up $29,630 and in the non-residential area the assessment increased by $22,440 for an overall change of $52,070,” explained Willis.
She also told council that Municipal Sustainability Initiative (MSI) operating grants from the province would remain consistent, while MSI capital will decrease by about 25 per cent.
“We’ve known about that (25 per cent decrease) for quite a while now so we budgeted for that,” said Yargeau, adding that recent policing changes also resulted in a small 1.3 per cent increase in the RCMP requisition, which the town will absorb internally.
Willis discussed a number of changes to the budget, including increases to membership fees in the fitness department, a small increase to community peace officer revenues, a 15 per cent increase to insurance rates and a small increase in the area of recreation.
Decreases included freezing the cost of living boosts for council and staff, for a savings of about $60,000, a decrease in the library requisition by about $10,000 and the removal of a mower for $35,000.
Capital expenses covered in the 2020 budget, noted Willis, include construction of a new garage at the multiplex for the Penhold peace officers' vehicle, more than $1 million in roadwork, a new truck for the South Red Deer sewer line checks, a heating and cooling system for the Penhold Youth Club, trail development and picnic tables for the parks and recreation department, several arena equipment improvements, and equipment upgrades for the fitness centre.
Penhold CAO Rick Binnendyk also noted there is also $150,000 set aside in the 2020 budget for special projects.
In the meantime, the town will wait until this spring to send out tax notices once it receives its school requisition from the province.
