Mayor Hilda MacDonald says council took a no frills approach into deliberations
Residents in Leamington won't see a municipal property tax increase in 2021.
Administration proposed a 2 per cent increase in its draft budget, but Mayor Hilda MacDonald says council brought that number down to zero after two days of tough deliberations that ended Thursday night.
MacDonald says councillors took a "no frills" approach to avoid an increase that will eliminate contributions to reserve funds and cuts in several other areas.
"Tourism and economic development are at a standstill for 2021 and that's largely based on the pandemic and the fact that large gatherings will probably, more than likely, not happen until late next year," she says. "The usual things we've become used to, like concerts at musical venues and The Mill Street Market, those things are just not coming in 2021.”
She says infrastructure projects remain with the exception of $100,000 in sewer modeling that will be deferred to 2022.
"Those are still intact; we need to keep the infrastructure going. We just had some operations we cut back on," she says.
MacDonald says the municipality's reserve funds will likely have to "play catch up" when considering the 2022 budget.