(285 pages) was a staff budget that purportedly was a 0% increase but left it up to Council to approve or deny individual Service Level Adjustments (SLA's).After about 26 hours of scrutiny spread over 2 full days one week, 2 - 1/2 day sessions the next week and concluding with a 2 hour session after the last Council Meeting last Monday the budget tentatively sits at 2.02%. As 1%=242,063 this represents a tax increase of $488,967.
This tax increase is not etched in stone and indeed has not even come up for first reading for Council to take a formal vote. This will happened at the next Council meeting and a date(s) and location(s) for Public Input will be set.
The final budget CAN NOT be approved until after these public input session(s) and the input taken into account. Before then Council may elect to make further changes that will reduce or increase this amount and to debate the tax ratios that exist for the various classes.( Residential, Business , Light Industrial and Farming.)
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Don Quixote Note: I will be shortly posting 'The anatomy of a tax increase' that will show the ebb and flow of decision making that brought about this 2% tax increase and detail the effect of each individual decision on the SLA's.
For some it may be a fascinating insight into the budget process this year, to others it will be a 'skip to the next posting - this is boring as hell'.
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