Tom Sasvari
The Recorder
EVANSVILLE—The municipality of Burpee-Mills has passed another zero percent tax increase in its budget.
“We have passed a budget with no increase in taxes,” said Ken Noland, reeve of Burpee-Mills, earlier this week.
Mr. Noland explained that council was able to pass the zero percent budget increase, while taking care of its portion of funding for the Gore Bay-Manitoulin Airport repaving project, and not having to decrease any of its services, for instance, on road maintenance.
“When the airport repaving project was done we drew our share of the funds from our reserves, but treated this like a loan and replenished the amount (in reserves) with interest,” said Mr. Noland. “If we had borrowed from the bank it would have been at about a three to four percent interest rate. So we treated our payment like this and added the interest on top of our total,” he said, adding that the municipality’s share of the airport repaving project was between $130,000-140,000.
“We’re on the last year of infrastructure grants with the province, with the one-third share between the municipality, province and federal government. We are in the last year of receiving these funds, which goes towards roads,” continued Mr. Noland.
Mr. Noland also noted, “we still have a healthy reserve. Our auditor is providing the financial statement for the municipality indicated that we are on par with other municipalities in terms of finances and our reserves.”
Mr. Noland also noted one of the reasons for the good financial situation the municipality is in has to do in part with the fact, “our assessment continues to rise in the municipality with new building permits.”
“Part of the reason we are in good financial shape is due to good planning on the part of council and our municipal office staff,” added Mr. Noland.
