Budget Cheer

We are having a very good year. A surplus was created by supplementary assessment which wasn't on the books when we struck the last budget. So a cool million was in the coffers before we even started to calculate our wealth for the 2010 budget.

Supplementary assessment in one year becomes regular revenue in the next. Already we are two million dollars richer this year than last.

We have $1.2million from the province for our share of the gas tax to be used for capital projects.

Infrastructure grants from the federal government for more than twenty projects which have been on the books for a number of years were approved in an amount of another million or thereabouts.

We will have supplementary assessment again later this year. Half of the Smart Centre development at 404 remains to be finished and assessed. . The treasurer put half the anticipated $700Ks. supplementary assessment in the budget, to offset next year's expenditures.

It's like going to one of those shops where they cash your pay cheque before you get it.

Councillor MacEachern thought we should show an additional hundred thou from that source on the revenue side. It inflates revenue figures by another half million.

Every year since 2004, the province has absorbed increases in the cost of education. The property tax has not increased for education since 2004.

Add it all up and we have about 5million dollars in extra revenues showing in the budget before we even started talking about what we are going to spend in 2010.

Good News ...eh!

Just think what your tax bill for 2010 would have been, without five million dollars to soften the blow.