The draft budget for the Town of Morris has been prepared, and council will be conducting a review of it this week. Mayor Scott Crick is very encouraged by the work staff has put into the plan, stressing Council certainly appreciates the inflationary pressures on everyone's pocketbook these days.
"Council has certainly kept that in mind as we tried to prepare the budget for 2025," said Crick during In the Mayor's Chair. "I'll say, what I found encouraging, is that despite having hypothetically taxes go up this year due to property reassessment, we found a way to bring down the mill rate to roughly compensate for that, and still live within our means with a similar amount of revenue compared to last year for property taxes."
Council doing it can to minimize potential tax increases
Crick reassured residents Council has done everything it can to minimize any potential tax increase.
"If we're going to be investing in the future of our community, then that is why we have reserves, and to draw upon those reserves as necessary to do that," he explained. "In fact, actually, although we will be pulling slightly from reserves in 2025, that is roughly equivalent to what we had as a surplus in 2024. As a community, we continue to try to live within our means. Even though we, as town council, do also face inflationary pressures, to find ways to provide the same services in affordable a way as possible, and also look at ways to grow town revenues, as well, through things such as better utilization of the Multiplex, increasing swimming lesson registrations, etcetera."
Once the final tweaks to the budget are in place, notifications will go out regarding the public hearing for it.
Scott Crick made the comments for In the Mayor's Chair, which you can listen to, below.