Sarnia council heads into budget deliberations Tuesday facing a property tax hike of about four per cent.
The City of Sarnia's 2019 draft budget, unveiled last fall, amounted to $145.2 million and called for $78.1 million to be raised through taxation -- an increase of $2.8 million or 3.72 per cent.
General operating expenditures totalled just over $77 million while police costs were just over $26 million.
Finance Director Lisa Armstrong said there have been some changes since then, which she has provided to council in a report.
"If council is to include all of those changes, the impact is a 3.88 per cent increase," said Armstrong. "We have received notification from the province that our OMPF [Ontario Municipal Partnership Fund] funding will be reduced, but we haven't been given any idea of how much it may be reduced."
Armstrong is proposing to council that the city assume a reduction of 30 per cent in that funding.
"It's a $2.4 million grant funding that we receive from the province. So that's $745,000, or just over a one per cent net impact to the budget," she said.
Armstrong also learned the city will receive cannabis grant funding.
"They [the province] announced on November 26 that our first payment of funds is $127.50 per household, which equates to $42,712 for the City of Sarnia, and then the second payment they will be distributing between the municipalities that opt-in," she said.
Armstrong said that allocation won't be known until later in the year.
She said anticipated increases in medical and dental benefits actually came in lower and the city had allocated $57,000 for an increase in student minimum wage this month, which the province has since cancelled.
A 1 per cent hike in the police budget and changes to recycling, compost and garbage contracts are other key drivers in the 2019 budget.
City council's budget deliberations start at 9 a.m.
