Danville has released a balanced budget for 2022, predicting citizens will see an average 8 per cent increase on their annual tax bill this year.
To offer real world context, the budget summary predicts an average single-family home benefiting from all categories of municipal infrastructure services would see an increase of $204 on the year or $17 per month.
Total revenues and expenses for 2022 are projected at $7.6 million, a 13 per cent increase compared to last year’s $6.7 million budget.
But the town is not currently in a position to confirm whether the past four years resulted in a surplus or deficit. The incoming council inherited an accounting backlog with no finalized financial statements produced during the 2018-2020 period.
In a recent interview, Mayor Martine Satre said the municipality is working with accountants to close the books on 2018 and 2019 exercises by March, then proceed with finalizing 2020 and 2021.
The new 2022 budget offers a standard degree of transparency into projections for the upcoming year, short on text and heavy on tables of revenues, expenses and taxes, with categorical subtotals alongside a comparison to the same items in the previous year’s budget.
Already, this represents a step up in clarity compared to the 2021 budget report, which consisted of a three-page narrative with no subtotals, accompanied by a pie chart of departmental percentage shares of total annual operations with no contextual comparison to previous exercises.
