Ponoka Town Council has approved a 4% increase in municipal property taxes.

This increase works out to a $27 increase per $100,000 of assessed value on a residential property, and a $36 increase per $100,000 of assessed value on commercial properties.

In order to keep the increase at 4%, council transferred $90,275 from the town's general contingency reserve.

They also agreed to freeze wage hikes in 2017 for council members, all non-unionized town staff, and town electrical employees.

The Community Peace Officer program was suspended in January of this year as another cost saving measure, reassigning bylaw enforcement to existing town staff, and relying on Ponoka RCMP, which the town funds annually to provide community policing, as well as traffic enforcement.

CAO Albert Flootman says these cuts followed extensive cuts to last year’s budget, in order to limit the property tax increase to only 1.5% in 2016.

He says they need to pay close attention to this year’s budget in order to stay on track for next year.

"Town administration will be closely monitoring every budget line throughout 2017 to ensure we stay within budget targets. Operating such a tight budget means council and administration will be considering tough decisions about service levels and looking for ways to generate new revenue as we work toward the 2018 budget".

Another strategy was to minimize budget reserves for capital projects this year, the goal being to replenish those reserves with surplus electrical revenues as the Alberta economy slowly improves, which will cause an increase in electrical revenues.

Council is working with an operating budget of $16,786,371, a capital budget of $6,531,431, for a combined total budget of $23,317,802.