Despite keeping expenses as tight as possible, property owners within the village of Port Elgin will be paying a bit more in the property taxes this year. At a special meeting of council held last week the village council passed a motion to accept its operating budget of $464,595 for 2012.
Mayor Judy Scott said Monday that property owners will pay 1.3026 for every $100 of property value, up .0049 from 2011.
"We had a tough year, with a lot of additional expenses that we weren't expecting including additional costs due to administrative changes, changes to our accounting system which is part of a new provincial regulation and increased costs for repairs to streets and roads. We kept things pretty tight across the board, some deductions here and there with no real major ones, but there was still no way we could avoid a small tax increase," she said.
The village is facing more than $150,000 is repairs to the Main Street sewage lift station, funding Scott hopes they will be able to access through the provincial gas tax rebate program.
"Our water and sewerage systems are more than 35 years old now so we're dealing with some expensive upgrading and repair. Fortunately the water system is working fine, but we had to replace one lift station last year and now we're looking at having to replace the pumps in the second one," she said.
Port Elgin's budget is a $30,000 increase over that of 2011, with revenue projected to be $132,000, up about $25,000 from last year, leaving a net budget of $332,135 for 2012. The provincial unconditional grant was decreased almost $1,200 to $58,295 resulting in a warrant of $273,840 to be raised through local property taxes. The Village of Port Elgin has an assessed tax base of $21,021,991.
In the utility budget, the village realized a $42,400 surplus from the previous year and posted a total budget of $117,977 for 2012.
However, due to an increase in maintenance and repairs of the village's sewage system, the average cost per household will increase some 20 per cent to $308 - $123 for water service and $185 for sewerage service. There are the equivalent of 223 residential utility users within the village of Port Elgin.
