The Town of Essex has approved its 2026 budget.
Council held budget deliberations on Monday and approved a general levy increase of 2.99 per cent. The blended rate with the County of Essex is 2.66 per cent.
The proposed budget initially called for a 4.92 per cent tax rate increase.
The $79.9-million budget includes more than $21-million dedicated to capital projects
The proposed budget would have seen residents pay an average of $2,208 in property tax on a home assessed at $192,000. The new tax rate represents an average annual increase of $95.57 annually, or $7.71 monthly for the average household in the Town of Essex.
Key investments include the replacement of Fire Station 3, improvements to the Maidstone Avenue/Talbot Street intersection, Phase 1 of the Enterprise Resource Planning system and a hybrid Bylaw Enforcement patrol vehicle.
Essex mayor Sherry Bondy says council cut 0.5 per cent to the town's asset management fund.
"I will fully disclose with members of the public, I myself did not support, but I think it was the right thing at the end of the day... majority of council did support it. Each year, we have administration making recommendations to asset management, which is the renewal of existing assets, and so 0.5 came from that."
She says they've made some small cuts, including to traffic study that was planned for the Polish Beach Club.
"So we decided to talk about it instead, looking at can we do anything internally? Can we work with the Polish Club? Can we do signage? So, that was removed. We had some pedestrian crosswalks removed. We have a council contingency fund that usually each year we have $25,000 in the budget in case something comes up, we reduced that to $12,000."
Bondy says the budget includes 1.75 per cent towards Ontario Provincial Police contracts, which can't be adjusted.
"We have contractual obligations that just happened. If you want employees to stay, employees go through routine reviews of wages, and that's on the levy as well. So we know that we had an increase in calls for service."
The budget focuses on core services, improving community assets, and advancing long-term strategic priorities identified in the 2023-2027 Strategic Action Plan.
-with files from AM800's The Kyle Horner Show