While many communities are facing hefty tax hikes this year, the town of Hearst isn’t one of them. In fact, residents will face a 2.75 per cent increase or about $83 if you pay $3,000 in taxes a year. Chief Administrative Officer Eric Picard says what helped the town coffers has been its daycare program and having money in the bank.
“We did a huge push with daycare last year to try and get qualified people so we could also fill up the amount of kids we can accept,” he said. “With the daycare running at full capacity that was a big source of income. That added into it. The town of Hearst doesn’t have any loans so the increase in interest rate actually helped us to get more interest revenue.”
Picard says staff worked hard over several months to find areas to save money.
“This year with the rising cost of everything, I mean anyone who has natural gas kinda has an idea what I am talking about,” he said. “So we have to take care of the operational function of the budget and where we can try to trim the fat in the budget without reducing the level of service that the municipality can offer.”
