City budget focuses on infrastructure, hospital

In March, city council approved a budget that increases our funding for infrastructure and our hospital, resulting in a city tax increase of 3.29%. When blended with the Halton Region increase of 1.33%, and no increase to the education portion of your tax bill, the total increase for residents is 1.79%.

In this budget, council also increased infrustructure spending by $1.2m, primarily for road renewal.

Council increased the annual levy for Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital to $2.4 million, and added another $1.2million to the hospital fund from last year’s surplus. (The 2011 surplus was $4.9million).

Another $1.1 million from the surplus was directed to strategic land acquisition.

Council also asked staff to report back on options for wage information that could be collected from local employers and provided to the budget committee before union and non union wage and salary decisions are made.

My take: My commitment to residents is to ensure city spending focusing on priorities and need-to-haves. This budget does that with our extra commitments to the hospital, infrastructure and strategic land acquisition.