No tax hike for High River residents in the 2021 budget.

Calling it "revenue neutral" Town Council passed a zero per cent tax increase budget this week.

Mayor Craig Snodgrass says while the Town isn't raising taxes, they can still go up or down for individual homeowners depending on their home's assessed value, but in a slightly counter-intuitive way.

"If your property increases in value, your taxes will probably decrease slightly. If your property decreases, your taxes may increase slightly. And that is the only way we can keep this as a revenue neutral."

Snodgrass says the Town also won't be raising utility rates in 2021 as they have over the last few years as part of their utility rates diversion program.

"What we started back in, I think 2015, was to get off of that, that's why we had to increase taxes a few years there to get off of that utility diversion. Utilities should pay for themselves where you have money available to fix for those assets, rather than waiting on government grants and everything when something breaks."

The basic idea is to stop money from utilities going into the Town's general revenues, but rather the utilities themselves to make them self sustaining, while tax money goes into running the Town.

The Town's operating budget for 2021, remains at the same level as 2020 at $33,249,360.

The capital budget is $28,701,161, with $7,178,500 planned in new spending.

 

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