Courtesy: Northern Sunrise County
Northern Sunrise County Council Approves 2023 Budget and Tax Rate Bylaw
On April 11, 2023, Northern Sunrise County Council approved the final capital and operations budgets for 2023. The $33,878,738 budget includes an estimated $21,215,138 for general operations, $1,199,091 for debt payments and 11,434,509 for capital investments.
Council approved the 2023 tax rate bylaw on April 25, 2023, with a decrease in residential property tax. Due to the changing economic climate and inflationary pressures on municipal budgets most municipalities in Alberta are seeing increases in their property tax rates for 2023. While cost-of-living increases continue to be challenging for residents in our province, Council made a motion to decrease the residential tax rate by $1, bringing the tax rate down to $4 per $1,000 of assessed property value.
Residential property owners, for properties assessed at the same value as in 2022, will see a decrease of 20% on the municipal portion of the taxes.
“Council passed this budget under challenging circumstances while contending with lost revenue following provincial changes to assessment rules and continued downloading from the provincial government,” said Reeve Corinna Williams. “The total amount of funding available is further decreased by the fact that the County has to pay $206,720 as our portion of the Police Funding Model Regulation. “We continue to advocate to the province on these and other issues.”
Council and Administration have developed a balanced budget that invests in critical projects and essential programs and is thankful that our strategic decision-making allows us to continue providing some relief to County taxpayers. Once again, the budget maintains service levels and continues to place
the County in a stable financial position.
A few of the projects Council approved for 2023 include:
Drainage program of $1.5 million
Gravel and culvert programs of $1.65 million
Road and bridge projects of $3.6 million
Fleet and equipment replacements of $1.2 million
Agricultural Services building of $2.7 million
Keith Hopper, Trending 55
