Piney keeping mill rate same for tenth straight year, $1 million extra accrued for 2026

The RM of Piney released its 2026 budget on Tuesday which annouced once again that the mill rate will stay at 12.09 mills, which should bring an additional $1 million to the RM’s operating budget compared to 2024 and mirroring 2025.

“Approximately 55 percent of the total tax bill is going to schools and the 45 percent remaining is the municipal taxation. So, within our tax revenue, we have two categories: there’s at-large, which we as individual property owners pay based on assessed value, and then there’s grant-in-lieu (which) is what higher levels of government pay to the municipality (in lieu of taxes),” said CAO Martin Van Osch during the meeting.

“What we look to collect from the at-large community, those residents, property owners, ratepayers within the municipality, is $1.7 million and the grant-in-lieu is $183,000.”

This year’s budget allocated $3.7 million into the RM’s general operating fund, which saw funds generated from taxation ($1.95 million) and other sources of revenue ($1.74 million), such as grants and land sales, and five percent from grants in lieu from the government ($183,837).

Last year’s property assessments increased the value of some land and homes in the RM, so residents should expect to see an increase in taxes when the 12.09 mills from the RM, and school tax mill rates from the Seine River School Division (14.117 mills), Borderland School Division (12.615 mills), and provincial school levy rate (7.411 mills) are applied.

Middlebro farmer Terry Ewacha, who is suing the RM over the mill rate, told council he is against the mill rate staying the same as his property assessment rose 100 percent last year. He wants the RM to lower the mill rate this year in response to an increase in property values. Reeve Wayne Anderson said council will discuss the matter and do studies to see if a decrease is feasible.

The majority (30 percent) of budget expenditures will go towards transportation (roads and infrastructure) at $1.1 million (compared to 2025 when only $960,724 of a $1.2 million budget was used), fiscal services and capital (20 percent), and general government services (19 percent).

“And that isn’t surprising (that 30 percent of our expenditures are transportation based) because we’ve got 540 kilometres of roads to maintain. We’re one of the largest municipalities in the province of Manitoba and a lion’s share of our expenditures go to those services,” said Van Osch.

General government services, which includes staff salaries and council, office, and this year’s election expenses, sits at $720,637. Compared to last year, the budget for those line items was $701,677, wherein only $666,036 was used.

Protective services (police, fire, and inspections) came in at $357,000, an increase compared to last year’s budgeted amount of $335,350 ($374,362 was the actual amount used for 2025).

Van Osch said they increased this year’s protective services budget to cover the event of a wildfire in the RM. Also, the increase will cover the training of 20 volunteer firefighters for wildland fire training this spring and if there is money left over another 20 will be trained in the fall. Last year, 20 firefighters were trained on this skill.

“This is a hands-on training program of setting up pumps, running water, practicing those tactics that the wildfire service uses to combat wildland fires. We are also putting a number of volunteer firefighters through Level 1 training. So, this is NFPA standard Level 1 training. It’s a very in-depth course, very time-consuming for our volunteer firefighters, and their expenses and the instructor expenses are covered.”

Van Osch said the courses will be held out of the Woodridge fire hall which should save the RM money on transportation costs.

Environmental services (such as waste removal, lagoon, and recycling) saw a slight increase of $23,103 from last year to sit at $269,000 for 2026 due to the fact that recyclables are being sent to Winnipeg now as opposed to Epic Smile in St Malo, which has shut down its recycling program.

Public health and welfare services (social assistance and community service) didn’t change much from 2025 and sat at $23,916 this year.

Environmental development services was allocated $23,000 for planning and zoning, general land assembly, community development, and beautification and land rehabilitation.

Economic development services received $149,000, $1,000 less than last year. Recreation and cultural services received $220,000.

Capital expenditures were allocated $1.1 million, of which the majority went to street paving ($300,000), and a new fire service tanker ($630,000) that can hold more than 3,000 gallons of water and will be based out of the Woodridge fire hall and is cost shared 50/50 by the province and the municipality.

“We need to be able to move water to where the source of fire is. We don’t have hydrants in our municipality. So the ability to move water is really, really critical,” said Van Osch. “The tanker that we currently have is aged. It’s secondhand. It came from Ottawa. It’s provided us many years of service. We have the opportunity, because of grants that we’ve secured with the province of Manitoba, to look at purchasing a new tanker for our fire department.”

Van Osch said the tanker will help the whole Southeast as there are mutual aid agreements with other municipalities for assistance in wildkand fires and other services.

Other capital expenditures include upgrading trails around Sprague and building roads for the Woodridge subdivision to get it ready to sell lots in 2027. Van Osch said by the end of this year the RM will file an application with Manitoba Hydro for pre-service so that the lots can be sold next year.

Council gave first reading to the budget and if there are no changes, council will approve it on April 28.