Aylmer levy increase starts at over 10%

Aylmer councillors did a lot of listening and little decision making during the second finance committee meeting of 2016 on Monday, Feb. 29 to work on the 2016 budget. Rather than make any decisions during the meeting, finance committee chairman Ann Laur suggested councillors just listen to the staff reports and wait to do a line-by-line run through of the entire budget at the next meeting.

Finance Director Lisa Pelton told councillors that if all staff-recommended projects were approved as presented and if a surplus from 2015 wasn’t used, they would be faced with a 10.33 percent tax levy increase over last year. The total levy proposed by staff for 2016 would be $5,528,126.

The next budget meeting, to will be held Wednesday, March 2 starting at 4:30 p.m. in council chambers.