Tax rates in Antigonish Co. are staying put.
Councillors passed their 2020-21 budget at June’s regular municipal council meeting Monday night.
The residential rate remains $0.88/$100 of assessment; the commercial rate stays $1.46/$100 of assessment.
After the meeting, Owen McCarron, the warden of the municipality, said it was important not to pass any potential shortfalls on to ratepayers.
“There’s a lot of challenges, and we just felt that we needed to take a careful look at each and every line item within our budget, and make sure that we’re operating on a very lean budget,” he said. “This budget is a lean budget.”
McCarron said they were able to balance the overall $15.6 million budget without using provincial emergency loans established to help municipal officials offset the impact of COVID-19.
He said they can still leverage those loans if needed.
“That’ll be determined somewhat by how collections come in,” he said. “At this point, we feel Antigonish Co. (has) always had a strong collection rate, so we feel fairly confident that our collections will be okay.”
McCarron said they’re proud to maintain their tax rates.
The residential rate hasn’t changed in 12 years, while the commercial rate remains the lowest in the province.
