The mayor of Port Hawkesbury says town officials and councillors are trying new things this budget session.
Brenda Chisholm-Beaton says they made that decision at their first budget planning meeting recently.
After March’s regular town council meeting Tuesday night, Chisholm-Beaton said it’s important to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’re dealing with the repercussions of COVID-19- the challenges with the huge reduction in the typical revenue steams that we realize as a town.”
Chisholm-Beaton said the pandemic has been hard on everyone, so it’s important not to pass the impact onto taxpayers.
She said the best way to do that is to generate revenue.
“We hope this year to come up with some creative strategies to achieve a balanced budget while maintaining business continuity,” she said. “(We need) to figure out how can we grow our revenue streams so that we can potentially grow services and be able to lend the support that we need to COVID-19 recovery.”
Chisholm-Beaton said a tax increase is their last resort, but it’s too early to say if there will be one included in their 2021-22 budget.
