The Town of Essex will not be moving forward with a hiring freeze for new positions in the Town.
Council met Monday evening, with a notice of motion up for discussion by mayor Sherry Bondy - which failed with a 4-4 vote.
The notice was to implement a hiring freeze for any newly created full-time and part-time positions within the Town effective immediately for the year of 2025.
Bondy put forward the motion ahead of the 2025 budget as she says residents will be facing a tax increase for next year due to increases in the Ontario Provincial Police contract renewal and new union contracts, and she wants to keep the budget as low as possible.
Mayor Bondy says council will be faced with some hard decisions.
"We either need to cut staff, cut service, cut capital projects - we're already cutting capital projects because we can't do the same amount of capital projects we did last year. We have some really hard decisions, and I just want council to know that. And this is one way that we can say to the residents 'we hear you already'."
Councillor Katie McGuire-Blaise was in support of the motion, and says it would be a good move.
"I think it's a great idea, I wish we would've done it a couple of months ago before we re-hired everybody, but I think it's a great idea."
Councillor Joe Garon was against the notice of motion, and says the Town needs to be cognitive of adding employees.
"I think at budget times, when we deliberate, we do that anyway. I think we need to be flexible, I don't think we need to put this motion forward because budget in another couple to three weeks or so, we're going to be hashing all of that out anyway."
Mayor Bondy, deputy mayor Rob Shepley, councillor McGuire-Blaise, and councillor Kim Verbeek voted in favour of the motion.
Councillor Garon, councillor Jason Matyi, councillor Brad Allard, councillor Rodney Hammond opposed the motion, meaning it failed.
The budget is expected to be released to the public within the next week.