As a part of Kincardine Council’s efforts to decrease the 2023 tax rate increase, they had to make some tough decisions when it came to summer student positions.
Under discussion on Monday’s Special Budget meeting for this year’s Operating Budget, council had to decrease some summer student positions, while understanding that filling fewer positions may affect municipal services.
Councillor Jennifer Prenger explained why the municipality could manage with only two people mowing grass and doing maintenance for properties such as cemeteries, explaining that it was once a position she once held.
“I used to work for that third-party contractor that did the cemetery maintenance. And I used to mow all of the cemeteries, personally, for four years. It was me and one other person on our crew. We managed to do the entire municipality, other than the cemetery in town here, in three days.”
This experience may have been enough to put the minds of the rest of council at ease when they had to reduce how many positions for summer students went to certain departments, and still strike a balance between saving money and maintaining the quality of municipal services.
Initially, the summer positions for cemetery maintenance were for three people, but that was reduced to two during the special budget meeting.
In order to reduce costs, those student positions had to be eliminated in order to reduce the tax rate increase from over 11% to 7%.
By the end of the meeting, the tax rate increase for the Operating Budget was 6.32%.