Windsor city council freezes taxes for eighth straight year

Windsor city council froze taxes for the eighth straight year when it approved the 2016 budget Monday night.

After facing a 1.25 per cent tax increase just last month when the proposed budget was released to the public, council managed to whittle that figure down and freeze taxes yet again.

Mayor DrewDilkenslaid out his "pathtozero" plan that included reducing the operating budget request from Windsor Police Services by $500,000. That plan also includeda reassessment of the education portion of the tax levy, which was $1.3 million less than originally expected.

The city also killed the proposed road levy, which would have been used to fasttrackmuch-needed road repairsand dramatically improvethe condition of Windsor'scrumbling city streets. The levy would have equated to a 0.5 per cent increase to the budget.

Just before the end of the marathon council meeting that lasted more than 11 hours,council managed to find an extra $10 million for next year's capital budget. The money will comefrom the projected 2020 budget and will be used to pay for a wish list of projects presented by Dilkens.

That wish list included $2.1 million for North Service Road reconstruction, $2 million for an arts endowment and $1.5 million for Devon Drive reconstruction between South Service Road and Sidney Avenue.

On Monday evening, Dilkens thanked his council colleagues for helping the city extend its streak of zero budgets.

"I commend members of council for the hard work of going through this budget,"he said. "It's not easy to come up with zero and every year, it gets more and more difficult."

The mayor predicted it was "rather unlikely"this will happen again next year.