Wellesley councillors formally adopted the 2012 budget this week, but were split over the two per cent tax hike. The three in favour, however, outnumbered the two pushing for a slightly larger increase in order to boost the township’s reserve funds. Councillors Jim Olender and Herb Neher, along with Mayor Ross Kelterborn voted in favour of the budget, while Councillors Shelley Wagner and Paul Hergott were opposed.
The two per cent hike adds $21 to the township portion of the property tax bill of an average home assessed at $254,000.
“We went back and forth, back and forth. It was a long process for everybody and it’s a really difficult process but we have to consider the times that we’re dealing with,” said Neher prior to the budget being passed.
“I want to thank everybody. Everybody did their due diligence in revisiting their individual budgets and everyone has come up with some way, some means, of getting it down.”
The final budget bears little resemblance to the initial draft budget proposed by staff back on Jan. 24, which requested a 6.41 per cent tax increase. Councillors and staff went through that budget line by line, leaving virtually nothing untouched.
In total $119,286.65 was slashed before the end of the day, ranging from health and safety expenditures to clothing allowances for township employees. However, the majority of cuts came from reserve funds, which made up $79,000 – or two-thirds – of the budget reductions, including $50,000 from the future roads fund reserve, and $20,000 from recreation reserves.
For councillors Hergott and Wagner, chairs of the road and bridge committee and the recreation committee respectively, sacrificing the township’s future reserves to keep taxes lower in 2012 was something they could not support.
“We’re going to pay for it in the long run,” said Hergott after the meeting, adding he would have preferred a tax increase of about three per cent.
“We took from our reserves and we didn’t rebuild them,” added Wagner. “To me that was very, very important.”
Wagner also said she would have liked to have seen a tax increase between 2.5 and three per cent, which would have allowed the township to be more responsible with managing its reserve funds.
The two per cent tax increase will deliver an extra $68,550.47 to township coffers, bringing the total tax levy in 2012 to $3,637,714.
