High River council's looking to hold the line when it comes to the 2021 budget.

Mayor Craig Snodgrass gives a lot of credit to CAO Chris Prosser who's working on his first budget for the town.

"It's a very real budget, there's no crazy projections or anything in it that we don't know about, the revenue that he's projecting is based on our exact revenue from last year and that's what we're making the budget on," he says. "Right now it's a zero per cent increase and he's leaving it up for council's discussion and then council gets to decide what level of increase, if there is one, what level that's going to be."

He says in the past, staff would bring forward different scenarios with two, three, or four per cent increases and council would have to go through it and take items out they didn't feel were necessary.

Snodgrass says it's much easier to start at zero and add in what's really needed instead of taking things out.

He says there are some challenges with the library and Highwood Memorial Centre taking hits because of the pandemic.

"The Memorial Centre's revenue has just basically gone to zero, it's just struggling, so I'm sure there's going to be some asks there, that's coming back to us next week," he says.

He says it's a $32 million budget for 2021.

There's another virtual budget meeting Monday November 2.

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