{"id":25386,"date":"2019-12-13T18:45:11","date_gmt":"2019-12-13T23:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=25386"},"modified":"2019-12-18T19:06:17","modified_gmt":"2019-12-19T00:06:17","slug":"3-4-per-cent-tax-hike-gets-council-approval","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/3-4-per-cent-tax-hike-gets-council-approval\/","title":{"rendered":"3.4 per cent tax hike gets Council approval"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Council had approved a 3.4 per cent increase on the\nmunicipal portion of your tax bill, factoring in a 0.5 per cent increase to\nhelp fund the redevelopment of Library Square.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This week, local lawmakers signed off on the 2020\nOperating Budget as well as the budget related to water and wastewater\nservices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Council began the budget process sitting at a proposed\ntax increase of 2.9 per cent, leaving a half-a-percent on the table to manage\ndebt related to Library Square.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Budget talks have continued throughout November and into\nDecember, resulting in the final figure up for consideration and approval this\nweek. If the 2020 Budget gets the green light, projected budget figures for\n2021 and 2022 will get a tentative green light as well, estimated to be at 3.4\nand 2.9 per cent respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Budget Committee is recommending that Council\napprove total tax increases of 3.4, 3.4, and 2.9 per cent for 2020, 2021 and\n2022 respectively,\u201d said Jason Gaertner, Manager, Financial Management. \u201cEach\nof these recommended annual increases include 1.9 per cent for inflationary\npressures and 1 per cent for fiscal strategies. The 2020 and 2021 increases\ninclude a further 0.5 per cent as per the Town\u2019s planned phase-in of debt\ncarrying costs relating to its new Library Square development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe one per cent tax increases in 2020, 2021, and 2022\nfor the Town\u2019s fiscal strategies will primarily support its ongoing strategy of\nincreasing its contributions to infrastructure reserves in support of\ninfrastructure renewal and the reduction in the Town\u2019s reliance on\nsupplementary tax revenues.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Library Square is not the only initiative that provided a\nnew funding pressure on the 2020 budget. Another factor was increasing\noperating costs related to the Aurora Cultural Centre, which asked for an\nincrease in funding over the next three years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe total required investment for the Library Square\nproject is presently estimated to be $47.9 million,\u201d said Mr. Gaertner. \u201cThe\nTown\u2019s proposed investment strategy for this project includes the use of debt\nas a source of funding. The debt\u2019s tolerance for this project was defined as\nthe debt principle cannot exceed a point where its annual carrying costs exceed\nan equivalent value to a 1 per cent tax rate increase being 484,700 in 2020.\nThe investment strategy for this project plans to use this maximum defined debt\nthreshold. The debt is expected to be required in late 2020 or early 2022. This\nprovides the Town time to phase in the annual carrying costs, principal and\ninterest, of this debt. The Budget Committee agreed to phase in these planned\nrequirements over 2020 and 2021 in two equal tax rate increases of 0.5 per\ncent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Aurora Cultural Centre (ACC) operating pressures in each of the next three fiscal years totalling $67,000, $19,000 and $21,400 in 2020, 2021, and 2022 respectively. Upon the application of the Town\u2019s already budgeted incremental amounts in support of the ACC, its net remaining funding requirements were $58,700, $10,500 and $12,800 for the next three years. The Budget Committee agreed to fund these net remaining pressures out of existing Library Square operating budget funding already included in the recommended operating budgets for the next three years, thus avoiding the need for any further incremental tax rate increases.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir <\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Council had approved a 3.4 per cent increase on the municipal portion of your tax bill, factoring in a 0.5 per cent increase to help fund the redevelopment of Library Square. This week, local lawmakers signed off on the 2020 Operating Budget as well as the budget related to water and wastewater services. Council began […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6Bs","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-10 04:54:40","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25386\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}