The Okotoks 2017 Budget has been approved but there's a ton work that's done behind the scenes to to make there's no errors or omissions from a daunting task in balancing and setting a new budget each fiscal year.

Currently the Town is operating at a budget just over $54 million and all avenues have to be crossed as to where tax payer dollars and other expenditures are going.

Finance & Systems Director for the Town Rolland Russell says there's a few major points to planning a budget after receiving guidance from members of Town Council where the fiance department needs to be heading into each year.

"Generally the guidelines are from a tax levy standpoint and the utility rate standpoint so they'll give us an indication where they believe we need to end up on an overall basis," he says. "How much can we increase taxes, how much increase revenue from utilities and we take that information back."

Okotokians will pay a small increase in their taxes in 2017, as they went up 1.7% or $38 and Russell gives a crash course on how setting up taxes works.

"Taxes are a combination of changes in assessment and changes in spending. So when we get a tax guideline or tax change guideline from council we apply that percentage for example as an increase to our overall expense."

In a tough economic year like 2016, Russell says municipalities no matter the size can see revenues in some aspects and decreases in others leading to compromises in balancing budgets.

"Sometimes we have a little more room, maybe we can increase expenses a little more than we had anticipated and sometimes we have a little less room and we have to increase revenues from other sources or decrease expenses to stay within the guidelines that council divides."

The 2017 Budget Highlights can be found here.

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