BY PAUL MITCHELLNorth Country This Week

CANTON – The village board has whittled down an original 2024-25 spending plan carrying a 20.5 percent tax levy increase to approximately a 2.3 percent hike.

Mayor Michael Dalton said this year’s budget process has been “quite the eye opener.”

“We have made substantial changes from where we began to now,” the mayor stated.

Tentative budget figures see the tax levy increasing from $1,882,190 to $1,900,268. The tax rate in the current budget proposal would climb around 25 cents per $1,000 assessed value from the current tax rate of $10.506 to $10.755 - a 2.36 percent rate change with an actual tax rate hike 0.248.

Total appropriations for the 2024-25 general fund are currently estimated to be $7,450,097, up $292,095 from the 2023-24 budget. The budget includes $116,100 from the fund balance.

The estimated assessed value of taxable property is $176,684,940.

Dalton pointed to increased expenditures in the areas of labor contracts, health care (more than 14 percent increase) and the supply chain for goods and services.

“Health care alone increased 14.1 percent in one year and when added to everything else, this year became very tight. In addition, the lack of a state budget also makes it difficult to predict what we will have coming to us from several of the programs we depend on,” the mayor noted. “We have worked very hard to keep the tax rate down for a long time.”

“The reality is that we have to take care of our employees,” Dalton remarked. 

Water and sewer rates are not being increased at this time but the rates are being reviewed.

“We have several needed infrastructure projects that will have an effect on rates,” said Dalton.

A public hearing on the proposed 2024-25 budget will precede the village board’s monthly meeting on Wednesday, April 17, at 6:15 p.m. at the Canton Municipal Building. A special budget session is scheduled for April 23 at 7 p.m. Another special meeting will be called before May 1 to conduct a final review and vote on the budget.