Tax increase expected for the County of Essex

A projected tax increase is on the table for the County of Essex.

County council discussed a report Wednesday night on the status of the 2025 budget.

The full draft budget document will be released Thursday to county councillors but based on the status update presented to council, the proposed budget increase currently stands at 6.37 per cent.

County warden Hilda MacDonald says when the budget process started in August, the initial tax rate increase was projected at 11.16 per cent.

She says the initial projection was reviewed by finance, the CAO and the Senior Leadership Team and following the review, the projected increase was brought down to 6.37 per cent.

MacDonald says money is expected to be put away in different reserves.

"Council has the option of working with those reserve figures and those are frivolous, reserves are putting away for the future for costs that are coming down the road, so that we don't get short changed down the road or have borrow a big amount of money," says MacDonald.     

She says council has the discretion to cut what they see as something they're willing to forfeit for the coming year. 

"It's a balancing act because we don't like to hit service levels but some times service levels are the only thing you can impact," she says.  "So it's not an easy time for council to figure out what their priorities are." 

MacDonald says she was not caught off guard by the proposed 6.37 per cent increase.

"I was hoping it wasn't going to be in the double digits because you have to remember, there's contract negotiations that drive wages up right and there's cost of fuel, there's cost of supplies, even our projects are costing so much more money based on again wages and supplies," says MacDonald.  "So we were expecting a fairly substantial in comparison to previous years."       

The 6.37 per cent increase works out to a proposed levy increase of roughly $11.5-million.

Based on the status update, out of the $11.5 million increase, approximately $4 million is in relation to contractual increases.

The draft document will be released to the public on November 14.

County budget deliberations are set for November 28.