Ste Anne budget pays for active transportation

Taxes are going up an average of seven percent in the town of Ste Anne.

The $6.74-million budget for 2025 was presented at the April 9 council meeting.

It showed home values skyrocketing similar to most of the rest of the Southeast, by an average of 22 percent in Ste Anne’s case.

To keep taxes from increasing that much, council lowered the mill rate to 15.032.

“There was a strong recognition from council that we couldn’t hold the line at 22 percent as it would be crippling in today’s economy, which is why we landed at an average of seven percent on these properties,” said Mayor Yvan St. Vincent during the budget presentation.

Utility rates remain flat at $142.80. The garbage collection levy is up four percent.

The biggest expense in the budget is the borrowing passed in 2023 for the $13-million lagoon expansion, expected to be completed this year. It will help with population growth as the town is continuing the process of annexing land north of its current boundaries.

The town is borrowing $5.41 million to help pay its 50 percent share of the lagoon, with the rest of the money coming from the province, according to CAO Marc Darker. The amount included for this year for the lagoon expansion and treatment plant is $1.54 million, with $1.32 million of that borrowed and the rest from reserves.

The biggest new capital project this year is the Traverse Road sidewalk and storm sewer on the west end of town at $714,877. The next biggest is a sidewalk for Finnigan Road on the east end of town at $125,000.

“We feel the major highlight is the active transport down Traverse here to basically get to the Co-op,” said St. Vincent.

He explained how a 2024 study looked at the best way to have active transportation on Traverse from Langevin Road to La Verendrye Avenue, crossing the rail tracks and Central Avenue. Council chose one of six segments to complete in the next year or two, so only one side of the length between Central and the railroad will be done.

“The future segments are something that will be revisited yearly in different budgets to see if all six segments can one day be completed,” explained St. Vincent.

The province on March 20 approved $354,000 through the GROW program to deal with the drainage part of the project. The province still needs to officially sign off on the Traverse path as it is on and crosses provincial roads 207 and 210.

Other larger projects in the $3.14-million capital budget include a skidsteer replacement ($122,855), arena dehumidifiers and HRV upgrades ($119,911), and a new police SUV ($95,000).

There is no new borrowing in this budget. The town has nine loans out now, but three are coming off the books in the next two years: a sewer upgrades loan from 2011, a loan for paving Langevin Road in 2012, and the Ayson Place paving done in 2012.

More money is now being put into reserves to avoid needing to borrow so much in the future.

“A handful of years ago before this group, we weren’t planning well. Every time a new firetruck or new equipment or something was needed, we were pulling the full debenture and paying for it for 30-40 years. I think when we first got on council we probably had 20 debentures going, so we’ve been conscious about decreasing those and being proactive instead of reactive,” said St. Vincent.

Inflation is also affecting how much needs to be saved. The CAO responded to a question from the public about why reserves are higher.

“Some of these areas we’re seeing higher expenses for equipment. An example would be a firetruck cost us $500,000 four years ago. It’s now almost a million dollars to purchase a firetruck.

“So we’re having to shift around and put more into our asset management reserve to be able to afford or even keep pace with some of this equipment upgrades. Public works and everybody will tell you we’re running too old of equipment because our asset retirement obligations… tell us we need to be replacing everything every 10 to 15 years on this equipment.

“However, we’re not able to meet the demands of those replacements because of some of those past – let’s say administration and government didn’t do the asset management plans like they do now. So there wasn’t big reserves for those type of things,” said Darker.