Piney releases 2024 budget, mill rate stays the same

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This article was published 12/04/2024 (420 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The RM of Piney released its 2024 budget on Monday and Reeve Wayne Anderson said the budget was a “hold the line” budget.

“We’re not doing anything extra, taking on any new projects because of the state of the economy right now. A lot of people are feeling the pinch because of higher cost of living so this is definitely a hold the line budget,” he said.

One of the items that will make homeowners happy is that the mill rate will not change this year. Coming in at 12.09 mills. The rate translates into $1,209 municipal property tax for homes valued at $100,000. For homes in the following school divisions additional education tax will have to be added: Seine River School Division 12.670 mills and Border Land School division 12.193 mills.

“The mill rate is set at 12.09 for municipal purposes and it’s been that way out here for approximately 10 years…We’ve been fortunate. We’ve done some things to improve the area and to market the area, and as a result, the value of the land is going up, and the properties are going up, also our citizens are going up, which in turn gives us a bigger budget at the same mill rate,” said Anderson.

The RM’s municipal reserve is $2.8 million with expenses totaling $2.85 million.

“For municipal expenses 2.8 million of that 1.4 million through taxation what we’re hoping to generate just shy of 1.4 million in other revenue and that will result in a balanced budget for the municipality…We’ve always strived for balanced budgets and this budget is balanced for 2024,” said CAO Martin Van Osch.

For expenditures, transportation took the largest slice of the financial pie by 34 percent or $1 million in 2024, which was the same amount compared to 2023.

“We can see that transportation services are the single largest expense for the municipality. That isn’t a surprise seeing as we have 540 miles of road to maintain within the RM of Piney. It is definitely one of our major departments,” said Van Osch.

Other line items in the budget were government services, which came in at 17 percent at $623,627; protective services came in at nine percent of the budget with $274,000; environmental health, such as garbage collection and lagoons, came in at $241,500 this year compared to $212,337 in 2023; and environmental development hit $77,000 up from 2023’s figure of $36,715; and economic development hit $154,000 this year compared to $146,026 in 2023.

“Certainly, inflationary costs are creeping into most of our budget numbers for 2024,” said Van Osch.

Capital projects for the year include money allocated to office computers at $11,500; public works vehicles at $82,500; fire service protective gear at $59,000; and economic development at $154,000 the majority of which went to the rural transit initiative the RM has with Buffalo Point First Nation and the continued development of the Woodridge subdivision.