Following weeks of meetings by Elliot Lake's Budget Committee, Elliot Lake City Council is expected to approve a $52 annual property tax increase for 2019 next week. That figure would apply to urban residential property where the annual taxes would be $1,880. Of that, $1,735 would go to the city and the other $145 to whatever school board you pay taxes to. Rural residential property tax would increase by $90 to $4,088. Rural residential is taxed at 2.25 per cent.
Multi-residential property, which is taxed at 14.24 per cent (compared with 2.84 per cent for urban residential), would rise by $7,703 to $61,803. Commercial property, taxed at 3.02 per cent, would rise by $302 to $10,314; while occupied industrial property, taxed at 1.39 per cent, would rise by $92, with an increase to $6,728. These are averages.
Since all members of city council are also members of the Elliot Lake Budget Committee, it's not anticipated there will be a lot of debate about the property tax or this year's operating and capital budgets at next Monday night's council session.
At last Monday's Budget Meeting, Elliot Lake CAO Daniel Gagnon told council, as it stands, the net tax increase would be 2.5 to 3 percent, (likely 2.7 per cent) over 2018.
"We did refine the operating budget to get a base operating budget down to $11.48 million, which is an increase of roughly 3 per cent over last year,” he said. "That was done by the direction of the committee to take $100,000 from the library reserve to cushion rent costs in Pearson Plaza."
This year's spending enhancements will have a net levy impact of $225,674. That includes non-staff related enhancements of $75,000, along with capital and new staff spending. Non-staff related enhancements for 2019 include the food bank ($10,000) and Maplegate shelter ($10,000).
Mr. Gagnon continued, "So that's $97,000 in addition to the basic budget and then we have the new hires for 2019." New staff being suggested are city treasurer, executive assistant to the CAO, groundskeepers and a part time bylaw enforcement officer. That would mean a net cost of $345,770 in the 2019 operating budget.
The CAO noted the Budget Committee hasn't looked at capital spending in some time, but “there was some concern about the amount of money coming out of reserves. But again, looking back at it, there's not much you could consider frivolous in our capital budget. If, as expected, there's no net tax levy impact from the capital budget, that's because it's all coming from reserves and grants. That was similar to last year (2018) and the year before (2017), when it was $60,000."
The Budget Committee was told the operating budget would contain a base operating increase of 3 per cent over 2018, or $340,769. That means Elliot Lake's Operating Budget would be $11,488,385.
Under user fees, there was a discussion about implementing a significant jump in the cost of providing photocopies of city documents and other materials, as a way of discouraging the practice. Councillor Tom Turner thought the service should be discontinued completely. There will also be a user fee increase in the cost of disinterments at Elliot Lake Cemetery.
Also at Monday's council meeting, look for a final decision on whether or not to fix up Centennial.Arena in hopes of extending it's life by up to five years.