The Administrator for the town of Hearst hopes to have the first draft of the 2026 budget in the hands of council for a review in a couple of weeks.
Eric Picard says staff has been busy going over numbers and understanding how some of the double digit increases in various areas including policing will affect the bottom line.
“I mean these big double-digit increases do have a major impact on the budget, especially when we are trying to make the operational budget stay reasonable year over year,” he said. “But it has taken a lot of work to make sure everything’s ok but I’m confident we will have something that makes sense.”
Picard isn’t sure what type of tax increase that residents will be facing
“Trying to make a make a plan that works long term that helps as many people as possible but doesn’t increase the budget by like 30 per cent or 20 per cent or anything like that,” he said. “So really it is weighing the cost of everything versus the benefit of everything. Making sure we are hitting everything we have to hit and trying to have a plan for the future.”
