Bradford budget flatlines year over year – almost

Bradford West Gwillimbury councillors pulled out all the stops in hopes of keeping property taxes from rising too much.

In fact, when they had finished crunching the municipal portion of the budget they had worked out a 1.34 per cent decrease over last year.

“Council worked hard to ensure that the Town is taking advantage of all opportunities to reduce the tax rate to residents. In 2019 we will use every penny of available grants and funding from other levels of government, use existing reserves where possible and we trimmed budgets across the board.” – Mayor Rob Keffer

However, when the municipal portion is combined with the Special Capital Levy – which pays for the repair, replacement and rehabilitation of infrastructures like roads and facilities – there’s a sslight increase in the municipal portion of the property tax of 0.94% over 2018.

Town council is still waiting for budget numbers from the school boards, the county and police. Once those have been added on the town projects a tax increase of 2.34 per cent this year – an average $104 for a home assessed at $481,892.

Residents who receive water and wastewater services from the Town can expect to see an overall increase for these services of 2.98%.

The 2019 budget reflects the growing population of the town, with small increases made for:

• fire and emergency services staff and equipment
• rural and urban road improvements
• refurbishing two older parks and building a new one in the new Bradford Capital subdivision
• enhancing community safety measures such as traffic calming devices.

The budget is expected to get final approval at the next regular council meeting on February 5th.