Moncton City Council is holding the line on taxes for the 2018 fiscal year, according to the Operating Budget presented by the Finance Department.
Deputy Treasurer Gregg Houser admits the provincial government freezing property tax assessments in June of this year added an extra layer of challenge to balancing this $150 million budget.
“We’ve lost $2.5 to $2.6 million, a significant amount of potential revenue that we would have normally expected based on normal growth we would have received,” says Houser. “So what’s had to happen, we’ve had to look internally, how can we find those savings from more efficiencies?”
Houser says each Department came forward with areas where they could save money to the tune of $1.6 million overall.
“We’ve gathered some more revenue from various areas, so from all those things we’ve managed to balance the budget, so total revenues of course equals total expenses of course, without incurring a tax rate increase,” says Houser.
Budget deliberations are continuing at Moncton City Hall Friday starting at 8:30AM and the public is welcome to attend.