“These are tough times ahead, but I know there are still big things coming for the growth of our community,” said the Kensington mayor after council approved the 2017 budget at Wednesday’s monthly town meeting with total revenues and expenditures adding up to $2,223,736.
One of the first challenges with the budget was dealing with the $171,033 deficit from 2016.
“The first thing we budgeted for was the deficit that we carried over. The only way to balance the budget was by paying off that number… and we did.
“We’ve got some challenges ahead, and if we find that we go over in one area we’re going to find a place to save in another.”
However, that deficit didn’t bring a change to town taxes, with rates for non-commercial properties staying at $0.55 per $100 of assessment and $1.30 per $100 of assessment for commercial properties.
“We’ve always tried to work within our tax rate. Our goal is to hold the tax rate for as long as we can and as much as we can.
“These are tough times ahead, but I know there are still big things coming for the growth of our community,” said the Kensington mayor after council approved the 2017 budget at Wednesday’s monthly town meeting with total revenues and expenditures adding up to $2,223,736.
One of the first challenges with the budget was dealing with the $171,033 deficit from 2016.
“The first thing we budgeted for was the deficit that we carried over. The only way to balance the budget was by paying off that number… and we did.
“We’ve got some challenges ahead, and if we find that we go over in one area we’re going to find a place to save in another.”
However, that deficit didn’t bring a change to town taxes, with rates for non-commercial properties staying at $0.55 per $100 of assessment and $1.30 per $100 of assessment for commercial properties.
“We’ve always tried to work within our tax rate. Our goal is to hold the tax rate for as long as we can and as much as we can.
“We’ve seen a growth in population and a growth in property tax assessment, and usually those things are sufficient enough to cover our increased operating costs.”
This year’s budget also saw a raise in honorariums for mayor and councillors, increasing to about $5,300 for Caseley, $3,600 for the deputy mayor and $2,700 for councillors.
“In 2015, we took a 0.9 per cent decrease, then in 2016 we took a 0.9 per cent increase. So, right now our honorariums are sitting at about where they were in 2014.
“I think mine went up by about $50 from last year, and then the deputy’s and councillors’ would be even less.”
Kensington Town Council honorariums are dictated by a town bylaw that sees the honorarium increase or decrease by what the inflation rate is by the end of September for the previous year.
