The Foothills MD is about a million dollars better off after a decision announced a couple of weeks ago by the province.

MD Mayor Larry Spilak says it's something they worked on for quite awhile.

"First of all it was certainly a welcomed announcement, we'd been working with the AAMD&C through the association to refund the school tax," he says. "We were successful thankfully and really what it means is we can be back to normal. But I do think that us just emerging from the Lexin situation without having to cut services or increasing taxes beyond inflation was huge for us."

He say it was about a million dollars that they would have had to send to the Province for Lexin.

The MD had to forward education taxes to the Province for abandoned wells before they were officially declared abandoned by the Alberta Energy Regulator, a process that could be very lengthy.