The town of Moosomin passed its budget on Wednesday, and has dropped its mill rate by half a mill, from 12.5 mills to 12.0 mills, in an effort to recognize the downturn in the economy due to Covid-19. The result is a decrease in taxes of four per cent, with the minimum tax remaining at $750.
Mayor Larry Tomlinson says the town went into this year’s budget planning with the aim of lowering the mill rate to help out businesses and taxpayers, and were considering taking some money out of reserve funding to afford the tax cut before the provincial government announced a per capita grant under the Municipal Economic Enhancement Program (MEEP), resulting in an additional $394,247 for the town.
That money needs to be spent on capital projects, so the town decided to put it toward sewer main spot repair, sewer main relining, paving and curbing, however it gave the town the wiggle room it needed to lower the mill rate without dipping into reserve funds.
“Originally when we started planning the budget, as we went along we realized we could lower the mill rate a little bit, and after that we were determined we were going to lower it by half a mill,” says Mayor Larry Tomlinson.
“We were bound and determined we were gong to try to lower it if we could, even if we hadn’t got the MEEP funding. We talked about pulling a little bit out of reserves to try and do it. Paul and I spent a lot of time on this budget. It’s been changed so many times. We worked it and worked it and worked it because of what we were trying to do. We were trying to reduce it by that half mill and we needed everything to work. And we were gong to pull a little bit out of reserves to make it work, and when MEEP came along we weren’t going to have to pull it out of reserve and we were still able to do what we wanted.
“We thought we would do what we can for the businesses . . . Being that the businesses were closed and losing some business, we thought it was important to try to help them—I know they are struggling, some of them.”
The municipal tax levy for the town of Moosomin in 2020 is $3,279,097. Total revenues will amount to $7,534,979 and total expenditures are budgeted at $7,514,154, for a budgeted surplus of $20,825.
There will be no change to the mill rate factors for commercial, residential and agricultural land. The commercial mill rate factor is 1.8, the residential mill rate factor is 0.785 and the agricultural mill rate factor is 0.6.
