Chatham-Kent staff and councillors will be taking their 2022 budget deliberations into the fourth night.
When the draft budget was initially released, the municipality projected a tax increase of 4.74 per cent for 2022. After a long-winded discussion Tuesday night, the proposed tax hike was trimmed down to 2.93 per cent.
The evening began with a hike in the proposed tax increase. Councillor Marjorie Crew put forward a motion to fund an increase to land ambulance service.
According to Fire Chief Chris Case, the added funding would able a part-time ambulance to operate full-time seven days a week.
"We're seeing improvements for the safety of the crews, improvements for the safety of the public and overall increasing our capacity to deal with an increase in calls for service," said Case.
Municipal administration advised against the funding increase, but ultimately council approved to add $452,000 to the overall budget.
With the approval, the proposed tax increase rose to 3.26 per cent.
Councillor Michael Bondy entered a successful motion to commit $200,000 in reserves to help fund a tennis dome, but only if the Chatham Tennis Club can secure the remaining funding for the project.
Mayor Darrin Canniff followed with another successful motion to add $650,000 back into shoreline reserves.
Elsewhere in the evening, South Kent Councillor Clare Latimer proposed the idea of taking reserve funds to lessen the proposed tax increase this year.
However, Chief Financial Officer Gord Quinton said that would leave a 0.3 per cent increase to the 2023 budget process.
The motion failed seven to 11.
Council was able to trim some of the tax hike by pulling $200,000 in compensation funding to the market rate review. That helped bring the tax hike down to 3.14 per cent.
After plugging away to try and find ways to trim the tax increase, Councillor Joe Faas put forward a motion for the committee to adopt the 2022 budget. It failed in a 9-9 tie.
Revisiting the land ambulance motion, Councillor Doug Sulman successfully got the committee to delay the start of the service enhancement program until July of this year. This reduced the proposed tax increase by $289, 519.
Councillor Fass attempted to pass the budget again, but the motion failed again with another 9-9 tie.
Towards the end of the night, council was able to trim the proposed increase down to 2.93 per cent. Budget Chair Brock McGregor asked for additional items to be reviewed but was met with long stretches of quiet from fellow council members.
Budget deliberations will continue Wednesday night.
