Chatsworth Municipal Office (Photo by Nathan Shubert)
Chatsworth is adopting its 2024 budget, which includes a 7.53 per cent tax rate increase.
Mayor Scott Mackey says the budget, which was passed on Wednesday, will result in local home owners paying an additional $190 per $250,000 home assessment.
“It was certainly a very tough budget year, the toughest that I have seen in my 13 years on council. Staff came in initially at a 15 per cent increase and we had eight or nine meetings, and working with the staff, we were able to get that down to 7.53 for the local rate,” says Mackey.
Mackey says while he would like to see the tax rate lower, he is satisfied with what he feels is a responsible budget to meet inflation.
“No I am not happy that it’s that high, but I am happy with the job council did in reducing it from 15 per cent down to that mark,” says Mackey.
He adds as part of the budget, residents will see an increase in the price in garbage collection.
“Council made the difficult decision, we used to have one bag that wasn’t charged every other week. That has been removed, we are going to be charging for every bag. Pickup will still be every second week, but the bag fee will be $3 up from $2.50,” says Mackey.
He says council made this change to a user pay system to save rate payers an additional 1.8 per cent to the tax levy.
“It was either adding that amount to the overall levy, or you make it a user pay system. We want to encourage people to recycle and if you got free bags, it takes away from some people recycling the way they should be. In councils opinion, this was a fair system than instead of hitting everybody with an extra two per cent on the tax levy,” says Mackey.
Some major projects featured in the 2024 budget includes a new bridge being installed in Massie, upgrades to the municipality’s public works facilities and to the Keady Arena, improvements to some of the township’s cemeteries, replacing fire department equipment, and various road projects.
“We are certainly investing more money into our roads and bridges. A lot of the hard surface roads need to have care and attention given to them every year if you want to try and keep them as a good asset,” says Mackey.
Mackey says he hopes next year’s budget will not be a repeat of this year, but it will depend on inflation.