Hearst Town Council approved a 6.5 per cent tax increase during a Tuesday night special meeting. It represents a $121 a year increase for residential property owners and $134 a year for commercial.
Administrator Eric Picard says a big chunk to lower rate came from the Foyer De Pioneers nursing facility.
“We’re we can’t really budget for the amount that’s given every year,” he said. “We say it’s temporary and we are not expecting it so we did get it before the budget came out, so we were able to apply it to the revenue side of the equation to help bring that down even lower to help us get down to the six and a half per cent.”
More than $5.37 million worth of capital works projects were approved including 2.3 kilometres in improvements to Gaspesie Road that’s used by companies to bring logs to the mills.
“We had applied for some funding for about some $700,000 which we did get approved and we’re using some other funding to get everything set and done,” he said. “All and all you are looking at a 2.1 million dollar project.”
