Town budget shows 6 9 tax hike

Municipal property taxes in Ingersoll are going up 6.9 per cent or $66.70 per year on a home assessed at $165,000.
The increase is included in a budget council approved in principle on Thursday last week.
Factoring in the county’s 3.7 per cent increase, the total impact on properties assessed at $165,000 will be $80.07 for the year.
While council agreed on a 6.9 per cent increase for 2008 on Thursday, the document, which includes both capital and operating plans for the year, still wasn’t final. Council was expected to pass a bylaw following a public meeting on the budget last night.
Starting with a 29 per cent increase, town staff identified $1.6 million in cuts - including $1.07 million in capital projects and $524,000 in operating expenses - to get the number down to 7.6 per cent.
"The staff worked hard to find the cuts they did because we knew we had to go a long way from 29 per cent," said Gary Seitz, Ingersoll’s treasurer and director of finance.
From there, after much deliberation, council trimmed the document further to arrive at a 6.9 per cent increase for a total levy of $7.99 million which is about $520,000 more than 2007.

Council was working with a 13.3 per cent or $1 million decrease in revenue from 2007 in crafting this year’s budget. The decrease is the result of funds being borrowed from the town’s tax stabilization reserve to balance last year’s budget and 2007 supplementary taxes being overstated by $170,000.
"We don’t have that money this year," said Seitz.
Also impacting the tax increase is a $150,000 contribution to a reserve fund in preparation for the outcome of an appeal by CAMI Automotive for a partial refund of taxes it paid in 2007. The company is seeking the refund for taxes paid on portions of the plant that were not in use. Negotiations are ongoing but it is anticipated that the town will have to pay back a minimum of $300,000.

Other factors that impacted taxes include rising energy costs and some one-time costs including a two per cent increase in policing and Public Sector Accounting Board (PSAB) expenses.

PSAB takes a page from private sector accounting in that all assets - from buildings to underground pipes - must be inventoried, assigned a value and their depreciation tracked.
The idea is designed to help smooth out the municipal budgeting process by establishing a schedule to maintain or replace assets as they age and have the necessary funding in place, including regular contributions to reserves. The new infrastructure tracking system has to be up and running by Jan. 1, 2009.

"We’re being forced to be a little more knowledgeable as to what we have in terms of assets," said Mayor Paul Holbrough.
To help get the tax increase down to 6.9 per cent, $25,000 in reserves for an arena feasibility study and $5,000 toward a dog park were cut.

Council is also banking on $65,000 in revenue from the sale of land the town plans to declare surplus in 2008. While a complete list of possible surplus land is being compiled, that amount is about 50 per cent of the revenue expected from sales already being looked at.
Ingersoll had a record year for capital projects in 2007 but councillors pointed out that won’t be the case this year with significantly fewer planned.
"That does not say that we’re not still moving forward," Holbrough said.

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Town budget shows 6 9 tax hike