Raised voices, profanity and a suggestion to dissolve Gillies town council.
Tensions were high last week during a public meeting at the community centre, which forced organizers to station a pair of security guards at either end of the council table and have a police cruiser on standby in the parking lot.
In the draft budget, the township presented a municipal tax rate change of 34.2 per cent.
That number has since been dropped to 26 per cent, with elected officials stating that they have exhausted all options to reduce the burden on taxpayers.
Yves Belanger said the increased tax levy will be difficult on pensioners.
“For some of us it's going to mean an increase of $800 to $900 a year. I didn't see a 25 per cent increase on my pension at all,” Belanger added. “I don't know how we're going to come up with that kind of money. Do I have to go back out to work? That's not what I planned a retirement for.”
Belanger did acknowledge that he didn’t see many places in the proposed budget that could see reductions, but added it would be nice to see the increase spread out over a couple of years.
Fellow resident Clayton McKibbon said along with the higher tax levy, he claims that there was no public consultation set up to get input on the budget.
“We want to pay our taxes, but there's no way we could afford 26 plus percent,” noted McKibbon. “If you look at the budget, there's a lot of stuff that people don't understand, and a lot of stuff is put into one account, or taken out of another. [These types of answers] need to be discussed properly and shown to the residents.”
McKibbon argued that with the proposed tax levy, it would cost him between $1,000 and $1,200 per year more.
Reeve Wendy Wright disputed the claim that there has been a lack of opportunities to provide feedback to council on the proposed 2023 budget.
“We've been talking about this for three years, that this increase kind of an increase would be coming for the past few months. We've been talking about it specifically towards this year's budget and nobody has been at the meeting. We have been talking about it, just nobody's heard it because they haven't been [to a meeting until] now,” Wright said.
Wright added that she stands with council and the staff of the township, saying that it’s unfair to suggest that Gillies is trying to put people on welfare.
Final budget is scheduled to be ratified on Aug 15.
