You can read the entire document here. The budget committee will debate it on December 10th, with the council following up on December 17th.
I will post my thoughts later once I have had time to digest everything.
Once you get to the Schedule A (pages 86 to 90), please note that rural residents pay the ‘General’ rate, urban residents pay the ‘town’ rate. The urban portion is for internal calculations to calculate the town rate.
Lots to go through but 5% seems very high, and then you see we are also using reserves to keep it at 5% so the actual increase is much higher. Once we take those reserves out next year we will feel that on top of any increase.
MPI is also a poor measure as it is not consistent and essentially defined by each municipality. Taxpayers on the other hand would generally receive cost of living increases (if they get any) closer to CPI, which is around 1.5% for 2012.