GORDON/BARRIE ISLAND—Gordon/Barrie Island council has unanimously passed its 2024 budget, which will see a four percent increase.
“Basically, we have kept up to inflation,” stated Reeve Lee Hayden after council passed the budget at a meeting last week. “It is an inflationary increase, and it allows us to put a healthy amount, $50,000, into reserves.”
“The inflation rate is between three and four percent, so we are quite satisfied to keep the budget increase between those numbers,” said Reeve Hayden. “If you don’t keep up with inflation rates a municipality can get behind and this can lead to potentially higher tax increases.”
Reeve Hayden said one of the reasons for the increase, “is that our staffing costs have gone up this year. We are looking at succession and we brought in new people to fill the staffing needs. As well, there have been increased costs in areas that we as a municipality are mandated to pay a share and have no control of, such as district social services, public health and policing.”
“We are building a new sand dome this year, with the costs mainly being made up by a grant we received,” said Reeve Hayden. “This is the only planned major capital project we have planned for this year.”
Reeve Hayden said that as is the case every year, “we carry out a specific amount of surface treatment work on roads in a year. We have no new bridge, or any major culvert work planned to be done this year.”
“This year’s budget is lower than the increase local residents were faced with last year,” the reeve added. “Last year we had COVID costs and increased inflationary costs that we had to deal with.”
