Steinbach City Council approved their 2020 budget following a public hearing Tuesday evening.

Mayor Earl Funk was happy to announce that the average homeowner shouldn’t see a jump in taxes this year.

"Our assessed value of properties has gone up 5%. That is a huge jump as far as assessment goes. That means a 2.8% reduction in the mill rate to keep it at zero net. That doesn’t mean everyone is exactly at zero increase, depends on your assessment, your taxes could have gone up or they could have gone down, but generally our take as a city will be exactly the same as last year."

The owner of an average home in Steinbach, valued at just over $200,500, can expect to pay $1,236 in property taxes in 2020 which translates to $103 a month.

Funk notes there are a number of larger city projects that residents can look forward to this year including some work on infrastructure.

"The road surface renewing like the Kroeker Avenue project, that is a huge project. With what we are doing with our utilities, what we are borrowing, what we are using from reserves, that is going to be a $2.9M project which is really big for our community and then the asphalt overlay for Valarie Lane, Maplewood Street, and Parkview Crescent, that is coming in at just under $800,000."

Steinbach’s 2020 budget is allocating $13.1M to capital projects. $7.3M of that will go to new projects like events centre, and the Clearspring Greens pathway though both of these have not yet been confirmed, and $5.7M will go to renewal projects like Kroeker Ave., asphalt overlays, and a new dump truck.

Councillor Michael Zwaagstra

Councillor Michael Zwaagstra says this budget was initially put together late last year before shutdowns were implemented due to COVID-19. He notes some things are up in the air and may need to be pushed back.

"We obviously have a number of city facilities that are shut down right now that aren’t taking in revenue. We don’t know the full impacts of the shutdown are going to be because we are still in the early stages. It is important to also recognize that the majority of what the city does is continuing. We are still continuing with our fire and police services, we are still continuing with our significant underground infrastructure renewal on Kroeker Avenue, and our asphalt overlay program in the Georgetown."

Approximately $4.5M dollars of city revenue comes from user fees at facilities that are not running, however, Funk notes the shutdown also means some of the operating costs are lower. He notes they are taking things day by day but, in the meantime, the city will keep providing all necessary services and move forward with a number of projects.

Funk says another thing that is striking in the budget is the aggressive way the city is handling it’s debt.

"We will be retiring $2M of debt in this budget, we continue our five-year amortization. Our interest rates average 3.07% and our final debt balance in December will be $7.8M which is quite low for a city our size and I am excited to see that we are definitely managing our debt well."