Plenty of ideas being floated to keep Sudbury tax increase below 3.5 per cent

The City of Greater Sudbury is into day 3 of its 2019 budget deliberations.

In January the city proposed a 3.5 percent property tax increase, but at a Finance and Administration meeting Wednesday night, council debated several ways of lowering that number.

Councillor Bill LeDuc presented a motion that would see the city eliminate spending on snow bank removal in the downtown core, which he said would save the city $55,000.

"At home you're responsible to remove your own snow and I think that we just increased the operations by a million dollars this year, I think they can find $55,000 in their budget to look after the downtown that we don't have to go and add another $55,000 thousand to their budget," Leduc said.

His motion did not pass.

Councillor Deb McIntosh said she hopes to lower the proposed tax increase to just 3 percent.

To accomplish that, McIntosh presented a motion to defer the cost of the performance and convention centre portion of the Junction to next year's budget, moving forward this year with just the library and art gallery.

"What I'd like to suggest is that we defer the $426,539 connected to the performance centre and defer it to the 2020 budget and maintain the library art gallery investment that is there," McIntosh said.

Her motion did not pass, either.

McIntosh added that she was still in favour of the entire Junction project, a combined art gallery, library and convention centre, but her motion was intended to help lower the tax increase.

Budget deliberations continue Thursday night.