Corman Park residents and businesses will be digging a little deeper this year.

Corman Park Council voted at a meeting on Monday, January 23 to approve the municipality’s 2023 budget.

The budget includes a three percent increase in revenue, amounting to $334,205, generated through the municipal portion of property taxes.

It also projects a surplus of $1,209,514 for the coming year; and includes gross operating revenues of $23,400,622 and gross operating expenditures of $22,191,105. Capital expenditures in 2023 are projected to be $5,280,102.

The proposed base mill rate is 5.400.

Corman Park Reeve Judy Harwood

Corman Park Reeve Judy Harwood said council and administration worked hard to keep this year’s property tax increase as low as possible while ensuring services remained unaffected.

“We’re looking at a three per cent tax increase, which is reasonable when you take inflation into account,” said Harwood. “We’re doing our best to keep the rate down and provide the level of services that residents and businesses are needing.”

Harwood said inflationary pressures meant a zero per cent tax increase wasn’t a viable option.

“We can’t afford to fall behind and then look at bigger tax increases down the road,” she said.

After reviewing the first draft of the budget last fall, she said council directed administration to trim expenses in order to lower the tax increase.

“At first blush, we weren’t happy with things, so we had to do some paring,” she said. “Every municipality is doing that right now, to see how they can shave a little here and there, not to the detriment of ratepayers, but to be as efficient as possible with taxpayers’ money.”

Harwood said a couple of road construction projects originally planned for 2023 had to be shelved in order to find savings.

“It’s going to be a tough year,” she added. “The cost of everything is going up, from groceries to machinery. We want to make sure we do the best we can with the dollars we have, and I think we’ve done that in this budget.”

According to the RM administration, the average residential property with a full assessment value of $550,000 and a taxable assessment value of $440,000 will see an increase of $58.96 in its 2023 municipal property tax bill; from $1,936.88 in 2022 to $1,995.84 in 2023.

The average agricultural property with a full assessment value of  $120,000 and a  taxable assessment value of $66,000 will see an increase of $15.64 in its 2023 municipal property tax bill; from $511.83 in 2022 to $527.47 in 2023.

The average commercial property with a full assessment value of $2 million and  a taxable assessment value of $1.7 million will see a $317.90 increase in its 2023 municipal property tax bill; from $10,422.70 in 2022 to $10,740.60 in 2023.

Harwood said the 2023 budget includes several capital equipment purchases, such as road graders, that may not actually be received by the municipality until 2024 because of ongoing supply-chain delays.

“But we still have to plan for them in order to ensure we have the equipment needed into the future,” she said.

Harwood said the 2023 budget includes a freeze on new hires.

Capital projects slated for 2023 include: one mile of construction on Range Road 3050 ($1.4 million); Lutheran Shop concrete pad for salt shed ($135,000); Lutheran Shop building for salt shed ($280,000); and rock mulching projects ($266,000).

Capital equipment purchases for the public works department amount to $2,798,000 after trade-ins are factored in; while purchases of vehicles and equipment for the Corman Park Police Service are slated to cost $271,102.