There's a zero per cent increase in the Town of High River's 2022 Operating and Capital budgets.

They were passed by council at the Monday February 14 meeting.

Mayor Craig Snodgrass says they based the revenues on last years numbers and using that approach were able to keep the budget increase to zero.

"That's a lot of work our CAO Chris Prosser and and our financial team with Leanne Ashbacher and the amount of work they've done through all the departments trying to trim things back and trying to keep the tax impacts as low as we possibly can, I think they've done an excellent job of doing that," said Snodgrass.

There is a two per cent hike in utility rates.

"That's basically in order to fund future capital expenses so that we have reserve funds available for when those water and sewer repairs and maintenance need to be done that we have the funds available to do that."

There's also $800,000 going to various community groups with the bulk of that, $385,400 to the High River Library.

Others to receive municipal grants:
$152,000 Museum of the Highwood
$117,300 Highwood Centre
$22,900 High River Handibus
$15,000 STARS Foundation
$31,400 Lights and Parades Society
$3,000 High River Regional Airport
$30,000 Museum of the Highwood (Visitor Information Centre)

There's also $249,100 in new initiatives, including money for a survey on a new pedestrian bridge over the Highwood River.

The Capital budget comes in at $34,427,455 while the Operating budget is at $33,532,790.

Mayor Snodgrass says in the past a lot of the utility revenue was being diverted into operations, leaving reserves for utility repairs without funding.

"It wasn't a fair assessment of where we were with taxes, where clarity was with the utility rates and where clarity was with actual tax rates so over the last four years we've been trying to pull that back and with a few things that were happening financially with COVID we were able to just pull the Band-Aid off and speed it up a little bit so now the utilities fund themselves and the operations of the town are funded separately," he says. "One of the big things where the diversion was used was in the operations of the rec centre and we have a lot more clarity now as to what the true operational expenses of that rec centre are directly to the taxpayer."

He expects council will have discussions down the road about the future of recreation in the town.

The mill rate and more details on individual property taxes will come up in a couple of months.