Saugeen Shores Council has met for its first session of 2010 budget talks.
The nearly full day session on Tuesday was meant to just be an overview of capital projects–no projections of potential levy increases were included in the documents from treasury staff.
The biggest project of them all is the proposed over 20 million dollar installation of sanitary sewers north of the Saugeen River in Southampton.
Other major possibilities include a over 210 thousand dollars for a new plow truck, 487 thousand to continue resurfacing the Bruce-Saugeen Townline, raising another 115 thousand to enhance the proposed accessible playground, and an 80 thousand dollar parks and recreation master plan study.
The town also hopes for provincial connecting link support to reconstruct Highway 21 north of the Saugeen River.
Mayor Mike Smith says budget talks are always a good opportunity for department heads to make their suggestions and then for council to decide.
Each councillor spoke on what kind of maximum tax increase they’d like to see, and the consensus was, keep it as close to the inflation rate as possible.
Smith says there is not a strong appetitite for a tax increase in 2010.
The Mayor says department heads will now look at only the highest priority projects to suggest at the next round of talks in February.
Smith notes that assessment actually has gone up in Saugeen Shores, so revenue is still steady.
Councillor Luke Charbonneau says while the Saugeen Conservation Authority is suggesting a levy increase of less than two percent, Saugeen Shores could end up paying 24 thousand dollars more in 2010 because of the assessment increase.