Budget deliberations begin next week at city council

Budget Deliberations will begin at city council next week. Mayor Blaine Hyggen says council has had the opportunity to review everything well in advance to make sure they are all prepared and they are ready to make inform decisions on all the data. Hyggen says this year is difficult given the high cost of inflation.

“I’ll go back to, we meet together as mayors of in Alberta and we discuss some of the challenges that we see on a regular basis with inflation. And it’s been a struggle, and we know that we’ve been at zero per cent for three years, and we know what the cost of inflation and of course, a lot of the different, other challenges that we’re seeing for expenses. It’s going to be tough to stay out at zero per cent. As a matter of fact, I don’t want to scare everyone, but it won’t be a zero per cent tax increase,” said Mayor Blaine Hyggen.

City officials say Lethbridge could see a potential property tax increase of around 3.77 per cent. In 2019 it was 1.82 per cent.