Collingwood Council has finished budget deliberations, atleast for now.
There’s no draft budget yet, but council does know how much it will spend this year.
If there aren’t any changes, council will be spending 59.5 million dollars this year.
Council accepted the 2009 Municipal Estimates by a narrow vote of 5-4.
Treasurer Marjorie Leonard says 24.3 million is for capital projects and 35.2 million is for operations.
She says they will be spending a bit more than last year when the budget was about 52 million dollars.
Leonard says as it stands right now taxpayers would be paying 1.12 per cent which is about $17.50 more on a home assessed at 200 thousand dollars.
The treasurer says the numbers that council has approved are just 2009 estimates.
She says it will be a while yet until a draft budget is ready because she’s waiting to get the rates and tax ratios that the County has until April 30th to approve.
She says then she can adjust Colllingwood’s figures to include the new information from the County if need be.
Council has also decided not to put the 660 thousand dollars received from the developer of the Admiral Collingwood Place development into reserves.
That’s the money received from the developer for being allowed to build higher than the heritage guidelines allow.
Treasurer Leonard says that means that money is still available to put towards a project included in the budget estimates.