Aylmer levy increase down to 5.87%

Aylmer councillors managed to bring a tax levy increase of 9.84 percent down to 5.87 percent as they whittled away at the 2016 draft budget line by line during the Wednesday, March 2 Finance Committee meeting.

They reduced the amount of taxation in the budget by $198,500 in several different areas, the largest line item being not making a $100,000 contribution to the asset management reserve.

The $100,000 shortfall in the asset management plan was created by the former council during their 2014 budget deliberations when they were bringing the tax levy increase down.

The current council in their first budget deliberations in 2015 chose to not follow the staff recommendation to contribute $100,000 from taxation to the same reserve.

Councillor Ann Laur, the Finance Committee chairman, asked staff to do some “fine tuning” of their own department budgets before the next budget meeting scheduled for Wednesday, March 16 starting at 4:30 p.m. within town hall council chambers.